


A Study in Venom

by Ximei



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Exploration, F/M, Funny, Gen, Humor, Immortality, Other, Post-Canon, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ximei/pseuds/Ximei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A simple request from an odd visitor sends the Volturi clashing against an enemy that might be more dangerous than anyone, human or vampire, had ever thought possible. A study on the tragedy of immortality and the beauty of undying love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter I**

* * *

**In which we find vampires in a graveyard**

* * *

 

It was an unusual night in Volterra: stifling, airless, dry. The dark sky seemed to hover closer and closer over the earth, until it felt like the lid on a boiling pot, making the sounds of the crickets seem like metallic echoes. Waves of heat were rolling slowly over the graveyard, making the scent of honeysuckle even more unbearable for Jane. She exhaled. She felt as if she had sand in her throat and her tongue was almost stuck to the roof of her mouth. On nights like these, everything seemed to smell ten times stronger. It invaded her nostrils and lodged in her brain, pervasive and lingering. She longed for the cool and damp underground passageways that led to the Main Hall. Instead, she found herself standing on the paved narrow path between two cross-shaped gravestones. Dried-up lavender was adorning the grave to her right. With a slight tug, she pulled the dead plant from the cracked soil and threw it away. Her palms were covered with a fine powder as a result, and she clapped them together. A faint hint of lavender, rust and decay tickled her nose. _It is no good_ , she thought. _One cannot plant lavender in such conditions and expect it to survive._

"Jane, please try to be a little more discreet in your gardening efforts. The crickets are making it hard enough for me to hear anything."

Jane turned in the direction of the voice and saw Corin's head rise from the sea of crosses and statues. "The smell is unbearable" Jane said, crinkling her small nose.

"There are people rotting here. It is to be expected!" Corin answered her cheerfully before disappearing behind a bulky tombstone.

"It's not _that_ strong, thank all that is just in the world" the little vampire retorted, walking towards her through the maze of crosses and weeping angels and small plots of land covered with wilted poppies. With one hand, she was trying to brush away the dozens of delicate black insects that had landed on her summer dress, attracted by its light color. By the time she reached her, the yellow frills were stained with small brown dots.

"Do explain to me one thing: what purpose are you trying to achieve, again?"

Corin was sitting cross-legged, her back against a smooth marble gravestone. Jane could make out an oval indentation with the black and white photograph of a man half hidden behind Corin's shoulder.

"I have been rather vague, haven't I? Well my fair lady, the nature of my purpose here is scientifical-"

"- loosely speaking, of course" interjected Jane.

"Mock all you want, non-believer, but even you cannot deny the validity of the premise that brought us here."

"Your boredom?" a boy's voice came from behind an old, crumbling gravestone.

"What are you doing there, Alec?"

"I'm trying to improve old Signor Lorenzo's face sculpture. They got his chin wrong. He'd roll in his grave if he knew."

"How marvelously wonderful of you." Corin gave a distracted smile. Alec's fingers made a scratching sound on the washed-out stone bas-relief.

"Brother, please stop vandalizing graves."

"What she means by that is that Signor Lorenzo was a drunkard who held three mistresses, sired half a dozen children and had a scandalous incident involving a donkey and the confessional in the Cathedral, and does not deserve an accurate post-mortem sculpture."

"Excellent memory, Alec!" Corin gave a chuckle.

"What, it only happened one hundred and fifty years ago" the boy smiled a thin smile and went to poke his sister in the ribs.

"Not all of us are so devoted to the lives of humans" Jane swatted his arms away, her mood sour. Alec knew his exit cue when he saw it. "Well then, I shall go see my love now, if my dear Jane does not mind."

"By all means, go. I would hate to stay in the way of your happiness."

Corin listened to the echo of Alec's fading footsteps for a while and then turned her head to face Jane.

"Now then, where were we..."

"You were about to bore me into an ashen grave" Jane dutifully recalled.

"You are made of puns today, aren't you. However, even you cannot deny that we're not exactly on a wild goose chase here. You and I have both seen and heard some things which science, logic and our senses simply cannot explain. Since we are blessed with excellent hearing, we often hear very odd sounds, do we not? We hear voices when there is nobody around for miles and miles."

"It's called a telephone, Corin."

"Wish mine had a recorder so I could preserve your witty banter for posterity's sake. The voices I was referring to are speaking so softly that a normal human ear could not register them. At times, there are three people in a room and yet we hear a fourth voice who seems to carry its own little chat. And most bizarrely, sometimes we hear ourselves. "

Despite herself, Jane had to admit that Corin had a point there somewhere. Becoming a vampire was a difficult experience in itself, but the enhanced senses came with an extra price. _Hearing voices_ was a more frequent occurrence for a vampire than for a normal human. After a while, though, one learned to tune it out whenever it happened, just like the swarming voices that buzzed around the main plaza. Still, Jane had much better things to do with her immortality than spend it in a graveyard studying ghosts.

"I fail to see how we can find out something that other vampires haven't."

"You used to have a sense of adventure, Jane."

"If I had, then it ran off to Paris with your common sense. They're stargazing from the rooftops of Versailles now and laughing at their former owners."

Corin smiled at her, a sweet and gentle smile like the touch of a feather on a cheek. Jane felt a little cruel. She crouched down next to Corin, less sullen and suddenly amused by a witty epitaph on a certain Lucrezia di Gallo's tomb.

"There was this funny, but little spoken-of episode that took place while you and your brother were away hunting for werewolves in Asia on behalf of our beloved Caius. You know how he likes to call them filthy curs?"

"I do seem to recall an entire creative lexicon of names he used to call them" Jane smiled as she gave her dress a shake, trying to get rid of the glass-winged insects crawling on it.

"Yes, but we're interested in this particular one, for the sake of our little story. So one day, a pair of vampires from Wales visited us. They were brother and sister, and extremely talented. Caroline could make people forget things."

"So her power was basically Alzheimer's."

Corin ignored her companion's little jape and continued. "And Gordon could make someone believe anything he wanted. Wonderful gifts. We made chitchat with them, invited them to stay for dinner and Aro showed them his art collection to give Eleazar the time to figure out their talents. He'd sensed something interesting, but couldn't figure it out immediately. Their gifts worked in a subtle, long term way, but were quite efficient. You can imagine how thrilled Aro was."

Jane was silent.

"He was trying to show them the benefits of joining our family when suddenly we heard Caius' voice saying _filthy curs_." Corin sighed and made a spiral motion with her hand. "Gordon was a little hot headed and ended up spitting on Aro's robe and that made him upset, which in turn got everybody else murderously angry, except Marcus, of course, he just shook his head, and Felix and Demetri minced him. His mate tried to defend him, so they minced her, too. We put them together afterwards and I and Chelsea did our best to make them more pliable, but it all ended when Gordon boy lunged at Aro despite having only a leg and a hand. And that concludes today's episode of Volturi Bloopers."

"Master never spoke about that incident. It must have affected him greatly."

Corin clacked her tongue, climbed on a tombstone, placed her legs around the cross and let herself hang upside down. The loose silk top she was wearing whispered down and pooled on her chin, revealing her milky white breasts. Jane tried not to look at the body she would never have.

"What I am trying to understand here is how such phenomena work. How to distinguish intelligent spirits from recorded pieces of conversations that start playing at seemingly random times? It's difficult. Intelligent spirits are almost always whimsical and often tell you what _they_ want and not what _you_ need to know from them."

"Dead man's prerogative" replied Jane dryly.

Corin unclenched her legs, let herself fall on her hands and tumbled twice before stopping in a cross-legged position. "How is a conversation recorded and replayed? Is it the environment? A certain emotion that is more likely to be recorded? Or one that triggers it? Is it completely random on both sides? I want to know."

"What _I_ want to know is why Master chose this approach to the problem. Why do we have to be here?"

"He has to start somewhere" replied Corin, picking a cricket from her knee and throwing it at bullet speed in a rosebush.

"Listening for dead humans does not seem like a very productive activity. Master may be overzealous. We can afford to lose a few potential guard members once in a while. It was not even a mistake _per se_. Does Master really believe that this piece of information is vital to the Volturi?"

"Perhaps he is just his usual curious self. In any case do help me here, Jane. I cannot hear anything pertaining to the supernatural."

"Perhaps we should move."

"Capital idea. And if that doesn't work, we can always come back tomorrow night."

Jane's eyes narrowed.

 

* * *

 

They began walking randomly among the white graves, cypress trees crawling with ivy, the pale moon drifting above. Corin was glad to be out in the open air. Only rarely could she afford to leave the wives alone. She could not help but pity those ancient, somber women who were sentenced to spend their forever in a tower. Eternity was a heavy burden when one's world was made of square feet, bricks and spiders. Sulpicia's eyes were covered by such a dense milky white film that her pupils were pink rather than red and her skin had developed a texture verging on transparency, as if she was turning into a glass doll, layer by layer. Athenodora was most vocal about her discontent. Unlike her gilded cage mate, she had tasted freedom and found it sweet. She was the child of a brutal, beautiful world long gone and she had traveled and seen and felt and listened. She had tasted the smoke of a burning Rome on her tongue, she had heard a thousand battle cries and swam through the bellies of the Mediterranean's sunken ships. She'd searched in vain for Scylla and Charybdis and climbed Mount Olympus to see if there were any gods left. Countless centuries later, she would know for certain; there aren't. A tower is all there is.

Making people content came naturally for Corin. Seeing others at ease gave her peace of mind. As a young girl, she'd tell her many siblings about how good their lives were when in reality they weren't. _At least we aren't sick. Look how healthy and strong we are, we can do anything we want. I know we haven't eaten today, but there are people who go for weeks without anything but rats or dogs. We, on the other hand, will be feasting on something tomorrow. Look how pretty you look, sister..._ Even though her siblings were so long dead that it was tragic, Corin found herself doing the same thing for countless centuries. Soothing people and tying herself to them. It took her a while to notice the addiction caused by her talent. Even with that knowledge, Aro had asked her to cheer his wife and sister-in-law and she found herself unable to leave their side for more than a few days. The unhappiness that slowly engulfed the women in her absence was almost palpable and soon enough Corin would be there, all cheerful smiles and honeyed words and pity behind her eyes. No rest for the wicked.

"I wonder if vampires can haunt" she asked herself aloud.

 _Die and let's find out,_ thought Jane wistfully.

"Have you ever heard the voice of a departed vampire?"

"I thought we were supposed to be quiet."

Corin grimaced. "You have no spirit for research, Jane."

"Then that makes two of us. You talk so much that you leave no room for any actual research."

"A small flaw."

"I never said it was your only fl-"

"Sshh!" Corin raised one hand towards her. Normally, she wouldn't have dared to cut off Jane, sweet, _painful_ Jane, but she could hear a sound trickling through the dry air, almost impossible to pinpoint. Child's laughter. They sat in silence for a minute, but nothing happened. Then, a soft voice whispered into Jane's ear.

_I am here_

Jane snapped her head to the left, instinctively clasping a hand over her ear and making an angry noise from the back of her throat. Corin's face lit up with excitement, but she did not have time to stretch her lips into a smile when Jane exploded.

"I have had enough! I first thought this was pointless and boring as sin, but now it's making me _angry_. I am nobody's fool!" Her voice was gaining pitch as she spoke. "I care little about living humans and even less about dead ones!" Corin looked as if she wanted to say something, but thought better of it. "We will go and _get my brother_ and then we will go _home_ " said Jane in a tone that dared anyone to say otherwise.

Corin knew not to argue, especially when she felt as if a thousand needles were about to be pressed into her skin. In complete silence, they walked to the place where they knew Alec would be and found him standing in front of a grave half covered in brambles. On the tombstone was a round indentation containing the black and white photograph depicting a young woman with thick, long hair spilling over her shoulders and arms. The first time Alec had spied the photograph, he had declared himself in love with the girl. With her wide cheekbones, thin lips with corners slightly drooping down and small eyes, she was certainly not a picture of beauty. Yet her eyes, forever gazing off in melancholy had a certain sweetness to them and her hair was "fantastically beautiful" according to Alec.

"Shall I paint you a replica of it so that you may carry it close to your heart at all times?" teased Jane as she approached him.

"If you paint it, my dear Jane" he smiled, offering her his arm, "then I might really fall in love with it."

"You are nothing but flattery today."

"Never has the truth been shunned more than in this present day and age" he said woefully.

"You have been saying that for the past century or so."

"And was I ever wrong?" he asked as he hopped on a tomb and placed his elbow on the shoulder of an old, grave-looking angel.

"You were never completely right, though."

"One can never be completely _anything_. I thought we discussed this dozens-"

"Or hundreds-"

"No, thousands of time before." Alec left the serious angel, climbed on a nearby crypt and declared to the rusty cherub on top: "We have too much free time."

"And _we_ will soon be making a hole in someone's crypt if we don't climb down at once."

"Oh, what do they care, they are long gone from this world. And if I do end up making a hole in here they will be gone with the wind as well."

"Silly me, and I thought your marvelously witty phase had passed" said Jane with a half smile.

"Silly you _indeed_! I was just lulling you into a false sense of security."

Corin was watching the twins in silence, amused and a little sad at the same time. _They keep each other content. They don't need me. That's good, though. They won't be another weight on my chain._ An image of Sulpicia etching patterns into the tower wall with her nails flashed through her mind, as sudden as lightning on a warm spring sky. The phone in her pocket began to rang, and Jane and Alec turned expectantly towards her.

"Judging from the ringtone, that must be Felix" Corin fished her slim phone out of the pocket of her jeans and answered. Felix's pleasant voice reached three pairs of enhanced ears. "Corin, Aro wants you and the atomic kids back home, we have a visitor."

"Finally, real business" said Jane, relief in her voice.

The three proceeded to the gate of the graveyard, the twins ahead and Corin following from behind. She could tell that Alec was in a good mood. Unlike his sister, who was walking with stiff shoulders on the stone path, Alec hopped with grace from tombstone to tombstone, making comments about people long dead that he had known and nobody else in the world remembered now, finding faults with their sculpted likeness and kept trying to steal the small pearl clip from Jane's hair. He never did that with anyone else but her. Even though Corin had known Alec for centuries, there was a part of him that would forever belong to his twin and only to her. Alec was not a particularly playful character, but he jested and horsed around Jane to amuse her. Alec would burn the world to see his sister smile.

" _For still she haunts me phantomwise, Alice moving under skies, never seen by waking eyes_ " he recited, circling the tombstone of a little girl. He didn't remember who she had been. Children died a lot back in the days. One more soul for heaven. What do children do in heaven?

"Keep doing that and one will follow us home" warned Jane in a voice that clearly advised compliance. They left the cemetery and its crickets behind and began walking on _Porta Diana_ street. Like almost all vampires, the trio did not like walking at human speed but _dura lex, sed lex_ , as Caius would say. In earlier times, they would have ran like the wind on the then-paved street, as long as they could not hear any signs of human presence on their path. Now, human technology was everywhere, meticulous and invasive, recording reality through camera lenses.

"Wonder who this visitor is" Corin asked nobody in particular, as they made their way onto _Piazza del Bastione_. Somewhere on the steps of the Roman theatre, a group of men were chatting loudly.

"Heaven sent."

"Jane, you wound me. I cannot possibly be that boring."

"It's not about you, Corin" Alec was quick to interject. Jane gave him a look before replying: "I just don't like to waste my time in a graveyard and be harassed by some ghost child who obviously takes too much advantage of its lack of body."

"I just don't understand you, Jane. Didn't you two have psychic powers before you were-"

"That was different" Jane cut her off. "The mind is a powerful thing. Now I have had quite enough of this talk." Corin could feel the needles looming closer to her skin now.

"I do hope we get to go somewhere, whoever this visitor is" Alec slid gracefully between the two and gave them his arms. Corin gave his a grateful squeeze as they reached _Matteloti_ Street. They crept along the brick walls with the art gallery and the still-open _Etruria_ restaurant and the half dried potted plants below the iron cased glass panel filled with old film posters. Night in Volterra was a game of blue and orange and light and shadow in a maze.

Once they reached the square, Jane led the party in a winding alley and down the open hole at the end. Alec winced as the metal grate automatically slid into place. "That thing is too loud" he said as they made their way through the dark tunnel which they knew by heart.

"Your hearing is too good" Corin was checking the time on her phone. "We should hurry, I'd hate for them to start without us."

They shot like arrows through the darkness, barely touching wet stone and dirt, water drops colliding with their foreheads. By the time they stopped in front of the massive wooden door that led to the hallway, Jane's feet were wet from the puddles she had stepped into while running. She kicked her sandals away and entered the hallway barefoot. They boarded the elevator. Jane gave her dress a blank stare and muttered something about cloaks.

"Greetings and salutations" chirped Corin as the elevator doors opened and they entered the office. Afton looked up from his desk, a pile of papers as thick as a telephone book in his hands.

"How did the experiment go?" There was genuine curiosity in his tone. Ever since Gianna had been disposed of, a great part of her responsibilities had fallen on Afton's shoulders, at least until a new woman seeking immortality applied for the job. Afton was not happy with the arrangement and it was Corin's job to sprinkle a little _contentment_ in his direction. They all knew why he was in the Guard in the first place.

"So and so. One spirit tried to contact Jane via her left ear" answered Corin as she made her way to the coat hanger in the corner and grabbed the three cloaks hanging there.

Afton did not have the courage to appear amused. The three donned their cloaks and Corin gave Afton a friendly pat on the shoulder as they passed him and headed to the end of the hall. After more walking, they stopped in front of the concealed door. Alec slid the piece of paneling and opened the wooden door that led to the Main Hall's antechamber. Jane grinned at him, her eyebrows raised in anticipation, took his hand and pulled him through, followed by Corin.

As the three vampires stepped into the light of the Main Hall, they came face to face with the most unusual visitor the Volturi had had in a long time.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter II**

* * *

**In which Alec bugs Jane**

* * *

 

The Main Hall was illuminated by dozens of heavy iron candlestands lined up near the walls. The flickering flames of the tall white candles cast a warm light on the faces of the present company. It was a situation Jane and Alec had been in countless times since their master had brought them home. Whenever they had a visitor in Volterra, he would be brought before the assembly, regardless of any previous plans the wanderer might have had. The ones who did not know about the Volturi would be educated; the ones who knew would get a firm reminder. For hundreds of years, the twins had escorted visitors to the Main Hall and kept things strictly under control, and had thus become experts in Volturi protocol. There was a certain solemn air about the entire procedure, almost like in a church ritual, abided to and shared by all.

With the distinct exception of their leader.

"Dear ones, impeccable timing!" he congratulated from his throne. Marcus and Caius were sitting on each side of him, the former gazing absently at the candles and the latter studying the guest with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. "You've arrived just in time. Demetri has found our friend here wandering throughout the city, looking for us." The bodyguards, dressed plainly in jeans and t-shirts, were standing near the thrones and putting on what the twins recognized as their best poker faces.

As for their guest, he had turned to face the trio when they entered. He was a tall, gaunt looking man with short, cropped black hair and a bushy beard, dressed in a Russian monk's garb: frayed black cassok, a rope belt around his waist, plain sandals. Jane tried not to grimace at the sight of his too long, filthy toenails. A small wooden cross was hanging from his neck and he had a faded messenger bag slumped across his shoulder. He smelled faintly of myrrh and moss, and the scent brought forth the image of a derelict church overgrown with lush greenery to Jane's mind. The most remarkable aspect of him however, was his face. It looked as if the skin had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces that had been put back together by a precise and expert hand. Jane had never seen anything like that before. With morbid curiosity, she waited for him to speak, to see how his skin looked when stretching. His eyes were golden, a sign of animal blood and a source of unpleasant memories for everyone present. Jane found his more subtle facial features harder to discern because of the myriad of thin, white vines that crept on his face like rivers on a map. He looked at them for a few seconds, and the disbelief on his face was chased by horror. Unfazed, still holding hands, the twins approached the guest and stopped at a reasonable distance.

"These are my precious Jane and Alec, and the rusalka behind them is Corin. You have already met Felix and Demetri, and this shy one is Renata." Renata was half hidden behind Aro's throne, teeth clenched and eyes alert. The visitor turned to Aro.

"They are children..." his voice was tinged with nervousness and his discomfort was plain for all to see.

"Nobody here is young, my esteemed guest."

The man looked down, as if trying to gather his thoughts. Aro was looking at him patiently, fingers interlaced and smile unchanging. Finally, the man looked up and began:

"My name is Timur. I come from Russia. I live on Mountain Beshtau, near Pyatigorsk. I come here because I was told you were law. You keep peace."

"As we have been doing for thousands of years."

At that, the man seemed to be at a loss for words. Caius began tapping his fingers on the arm of his throne. A candle flame trembled in Marcus' eyes.

"And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?" coaxed Aro, with what Jane thought was saintly and certainly undeserved patience.

"I see something. People like us. I live on my mountain for one hundred and thirty years. I dig a small cave inside the mountain and I sit there and pray. I hide the entrance with rocks and mounds of leaves and snow. A month ago I want to go out to drink and then I see people running up the slopes. Moved too fast, could not be humans. At first I think to myself that they are just passing through so I stay in my cave until the next day. The next day, I see them again, and the day after that. Once, they meet so close to my cave that I can hear what they are saying, but I do not know their language. One week later they are still there so I am worried."

"May I ask why? You obviously do not share their diet..."

"I have family in Pyatigorsk. Great-great nieces and nephews. The one who change me tells me that contact with... people should be as little as possible. This is good for me because I live alone on mountain Beshtau, but I come down once every few years to see how they are. I do not want them killed, or worse."

"I understand your concerns Timur, but the Volturi cannot forbid vampires to feed. As long as they are careful not to expose themselves, they are free to do as they please."

Disappointment was obvious on the twin's faces. This man had been spending his vampire life in a hole on a mountain, eating squirrels. He was practically a savage with little knowledge of the vampire world, and he was asking the oldest and most powerful coven of vampires to chase off a bunch of nomads who happened to settle for a week on a pile of frozen rocks north of nowhere.

"I am well aware of that," Timur continued carefully. "I want to ask them to leave, but they are too many and I have bad feeling in my heart."

"And how many were there?"

"Twenty one."

Aro's smile fell off his face. " _How many_?"

Timur repeated the worrying number.

"Twenty one as in _dvadsat' odin_?"

" _Dvadsat'odin_ ," the stranger confirmed.

A stunned silence engulfed the hall. Jane exchanged a look with Alec. Even Marcus turned his head to stare at the guest. Encouraged by the reaction of his audience, Timur continued his story.

"When I see that they stay and stay, I dress in winter clothes and leave to see someone like me, who tells me large groups are forbidden and that the Volturi can help me. He give me map and money for road and here I am. They have broken the law and I ask for Volturi justice."

Aro rose from his throne, his composure regained. Renata followed him behind like a shadow.

"You have done well to inform us, regardless of motives. However, before we go on, I must tell you that the Volturi punish those who give false testimony. If what you say is true, we will send someone to disperse the coven, if it is indeed one. If you have lied to us, I am afraid we will have to follow the word of the law, as much as it pains us."

Aro's voice was the kind which you would expect a father chiding his son to have, but Timur seemed to feel the threat buried underneath. He shook his head. "I swear I tell truth and only truth."

"I believe you, friend." Aro glided down the steps toward him. "You have undertaken such a long journey. I think we should let you catch your breath for a few hours." Felix and Demetri inched closer to the guest. If he noticed them, Timur gave no sign of it. He was looking straight at Aro with his strange, intense gaze that not even fear could overshadow, and hesitantly took the vampire's extended hand and shook it. In a split instant, an endless river of thoughts opened wide inside Aro's mind. He swam upwards the waterfall of foggy human memories and saw a monastery with painted walls, a fall, the change, the boulder rushing towards him, a cave dug in stone and earth, its ceiling so low that you had to crawl on hands and knees to enter, the makeshift altar with the wooden crucifix, thin yellow candles and paper icons. And from that cave he peeked outside through the pile of stones and branches and saw them, smelled them and heard them talking, only he _understood_ what they were saying because it was ancient Greek and it was _something_ indeed...

"Timur, you have done well to seek our justice. Right now I must speak to my dear ones, but do not leave us yet. I have a wonderful collection of manuscripts from the Middle Ages which I am certain you would enjoy, isn't that so?" Timur nodded, a little uncertain. "Corin here will show you the way."

"Happy to oblige!" Corin threw the guest her most winning smile. The only thing that stopped Jane from rolling her eyes as hard as she could at that was the fear that the force of it would make her go blind. That, and the protocol.

"Our Corin really is a joy to have around, isn't she?" said Aro, looking pleased.

"This way," gestured Corin and led him out of the Main Hall. As the echo of their footsteps receeded, Aro turned to his guard, who had gathered around him in a circle of anxiety.

"My dearest ones, I will have to ask you to gather everyone."

 

* * *

 

The only thing that he could tell for certain was that the book was very old. The paper looked different from the ones he had seen before, and the pages were yellowed with age. A beautiful miniature of the Virgin was gazing sadly at him from the right page. Timur shifted his eyes from the glass case to the woman accompanying him. She had long hair the color of wet sand that she kept twisting into ringlets around her fingers and an uncommon face. In fact, all the Volturi members that he had met had something different about them. The woman, Corin, noticed him looking at her and took this as a cue to proceed into the sculpture gallery. As they were making their way trough the sealed, thermo-isolated rooms, she began to talk about the people whose works they had gathered and how difficult it was to rein down the ravages of time. The Volturi vaults seemed endless, with room after room of treasures glittering in display cases. There were bejeweled crowns and circlets, laquered boxes inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl, orante golden chalices, coins, amphors, mosaics, scrolls, lavishly decorated clothes and an entire room dedicated to weaponry: halberds, scimitars, maces, daggers, steel or iron, their hilts plain or encrusted with gems. The ancient vampires also seemed to have a knack for oddities; Timur noticed a pearl lager than his fist resting loftily on a velvet cushion, a few death masks of people he did not recognize, a pair of glass hands, strange looking musical instruments, an assortment of bottles of all shapes and sizes filled with liquids he could not identify and a pair of nightmarishly large jaws that could not have come from any animal he knew.

"These make a trophy, Caius got them in Asia Minor after a good fight with a child of the moon."

"One of us?..."

"No, children of the moon are werewolves. They are merely a legend now. We eliminate any threats to our kind."

Timur dared to ask if they were stronger than the vampires. "It depends on many factors, such as size and experience, and in the vampire's case, age and any talents they might have."

"You know much. How old are you?"

"Very," she answered, looking at the glass case filled with stuffed birds, their colorful wings extended and their beaks half open. "This little blue one is extinct. Such a shame. I can still remember a time when its kind filled the forests. Nature has such a way of setting things right. Like a great living body, endlessly growing and regenerating. It pains me that we have turned to its cancer."

"Humans are part of life as much as birds or grass," replied the monk.

"That is true, yet when you have existed for as long as I have, you can tell that something went wrong in the past few centuries. Much like weeds, humans have become invasive. They trumped natural selection and bred aggressively, making things difficult for our kind. You are probably thinking that I have it wrong, that more humans means more food and less hassle, but it is not so. They filled their cities with surveillance cameras and gave every one of them identification cards. They can find fingerprints and extract DNA from a strand of hair. Getting a meal has never been more difficult. Perhaps it is a sign that the Volturi need to change. We adapted by using blood bags... how did you adapt, if you do not mind me asking?"

"God showed me the way," answered Timur looking at the leather-bound books filling the shelves of the study they were passing through. All had golden years written on their spines.

"Jane's herbarium collection. She enjoys collecting plants," explained Corin and added "Did God also give you the scars on your face?"

"Everything has a price," came the morose answer.

"Indeed," agreed the other vampire somewhat absently.

"Why do you keep these things? Did they belong to your kind?"

"Not all of them. Some are for money or bribery, others for nostalgia."

The room they were in contained such an unsettingly realistic statue of a girl that Timur froze in the treshold.

"Felix made this, believe it or not. He told us it is supposed to be a girl he once kissed when he was human, but I think he is only playing with us. He loves doing that, you should know."

The girl had curls and dimples, and Timur wondered when she had lived and what would she have thought if she had known of this. The kiss of immortality.

"We vampires like to keep certain things to make sure that our lives really happened. You are too young to understand this, Timur (he was startled by the use of his name) but you need to live a few human lifetimes before you actually notice time. Humans write about it since script was invented, about how it saddens and buries them, but there is nothing that can compare to a vampire's experience of time. Everything changes, people, cities, ideas, and the longer you exist, the more you see that Earth is just a stage for whatever play people are acting in. Storms sweep across the desert, rain washes filth off the roof of the cities, wind eats away at everything and the only elements that change are the rules. At the very core, the players are all the same. You are a boulder in the middle of the stream of time, with people exploding in and out of existence around you, never to return, making you wonder sometimes if you did not perhaps just dream everything. I remember the past so well and yet nothing of it remains... Maybe this is why our role as keepers of history is so important."

"I think vampires are not very useful. People are good without them." It must have taken Timur a great deal of courage to express his conviction - Corin knew a religious man like him tends to have convictions in lieu of opinions - and the older vampire almost marveled at the boldness of the statement until she remembered that it was fueled by inexperience.

"You do not see us as useful? As, but you are still young. It will come to you, this sense of greatness. We are essential to this world, kindred, because without us there would be no one else left in the world to remember how Alexander the Great looked as he charged towards the Persian king in the battle os Issus, or how the heat blooming from Pompeii felt like the day after Vesuvius sealed its fate with ash. Who would remember how silphium smelled in spring? You cannot find it on the face of the earth anymore. The shouts of Roman peddlers as they passed through the streets, the sun rising over Babylon two thousand years ago, the tears in Caligula's little Julia as she tried to defend her mother from the assassins who would end both their lives... Bactrian wedding songs, Spartan war cries, the color of Cleopatra's eyes. Without us, all of this would be lost in time. Our perfect memories of these sights and sounds and people are the purest form of history. If we disappear, there will be nobody to remember anymore. And in this large and frightening darkness that is the universe, we are the ones who can give the closest thing to immortality to our beloved world." Thus spoke the ancient vampire, and there was such tenderness in her voice that the monk could not help but feel strangely moved.

"I am quite the philosopher when I want to be, but then most vampires become afflicted tendency with this over time," she smiled. "Would you like a drink? I can arrange to have some animal blood delivered."

When her guest nodded, Corin hurried to mention that he might also benefit from a new set of clothes.

"I know I look poor, but I like my clothes," he answered simply.

"At least let us give you a new pair of sandals. You can take the old pair with you, but - she crinkled her nose - if you walk around like this, you might attract unwanted attention."

"A poor man has nothing worth stealing."

"A man who looks like a vagabond dressed in foreign clothes may be questioned by the police. The bane of every law-abiding vampire is the policeman," spoke Corin as they were crossing room after room of antique treasures. "There is a certain irony in here somewhere."

"How did he look?" called Timur after her. "Alexander riding in the battle against Darius?"

At this, Corin stopped and turned.

" _Magnificent_ ," she breathed, and in her face was the fervor of a witness.

 

* * *

 

"What he first saw was a group of fifteen vampires running up the slopes one night. Over the next few days, more and more vampires joined the interesting summit, until their number reached twenty one. And this is only what _he_ saw - for all we know, there could be more."

The Main Hall was overflowing with Volturi. Some of them were normally called upon so rarely that they did not have the time to find their ceremonial cloaks and so they had come wearing their street clothes. Black shrouds were mingling with colorful prints and sleek office blazers. There were even one or two Star Wars t-shirts in the crowd, and Alec could have sworn that he saw Hartley from Treasury struggling to pull the zipper of his hoodie over a Zelda t-shirt. All eyes were on Aro, who was speaking in a calm, measured manner. The alarmingly large gathering from mount Beshtau had stirred a boiling anxiety in his followers, and most of all in himself. There hadn't been so many vampires together since the Cullen confrontation, and Aro had feared it had set a dangerous precedent.

"They ran up and down the slopes in pairs, in something akin to shifts. I did not recognize any of them, but some had the features found in old ones, and others looked newly minted. Once someone gives me a pencil and paper, I will draw portraits of each and every single one. "

There was a shuffle throughout the hall as Sybil from Accounting was dispatched for that purpose.

"The one time when they got close enough for our friend to hear them, the pair running up was met by the ones getting ready to descend and asked about whether they had found anything. The answer was that combing the city was harder than expected. While I am not certain in regards to what they were looking for, I find the situation intriguing enough to send a special delegation to investigate. Alec dear, Jane sweetheart."

The twins bowed their heads, obviously pleased at the prospect.

"Felix and Corin will accompany you in the guise of your parents and make sure everything goes smoothly. Take a day to organize the trip and then depart with our Russian friend. Use him as guide when you arrive at the scene, I am sure you can make some use of him in spite of his quirks. As for the rest of us, I want us all to see this as an excellent opportunity to further consolidate our role on a global scale. If we are very lucky, we have stumbled upon a conspiracy - which our guard will eliminate before it has a chance to grow into a real threat."

"Perhaps we should inform our contacts in Russia about this, brother. See if they know anything," suggested Caius.

"Not at this stage. It would be better to send our eyes and ears there first, and then act accordingly. Time is of the essence."

Sybil from Accounting, armed with paper and pencils, squeezed her way between Jane and Alec, leaving a soft trail of linden blossom perfume behind. Alec inhaled deeply.

Thousands of years' worth of practice had given Aro the ability to produce photographic drawings, and it was not long before his guard could look at the faces of the enigmatic vampires. The youngest looking was judged by all to be the oldest - a lanky boy of around sixteen, with a head full of curls and the telltale skin of someone who withstood centuries. The rest were an eclectic band of individuals: a middle aged man dressed in running clothes, a Roma woman of uncertain age with a genuine Hermès scarf wrapped around her face, a blond man with a pouting bottom lip and a sleek smartphone which he checked obsessively. One by one, they were committed to the twins' memory. The papers were then passed on to Afton to be scanned and mailed to Jane and Alec's joint e-mail account.

Nobody from the hall had ever come across any of the vampires from the drawings, which in itself was odd, as the Volturi outer circle was regularly dispatched on reconaissance missions all over the world. The small hope nurtured by Aro in that regard vanished as his question was met with absolute silence. Twenty one nobodies emerged from nowhere to search for something on a mountain in Russia. At that point, everybody was so intrigued that the vampires could have been searching for Waldo and the Volturi would have still investigated, thought Jane idly.

"Do you think there is a deep and dark plot against us, my heart?" asked Alec as the Volturi began to file out of the hall in neat rows. He unsuccessfuly tried to trip Maurel from Procurement and got discreetely flipped off.

"I certainly hope so," replied Jane and, upon rearranging her hair clip, realized her brother had stuck a grotesquely large stag beetle in it. She mentally gave everyone points for not mentioning it. "Do not start with me, brother - you will _not_ win."

Alec just smiled mysteriously.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

**Chapter III**

* * *

**In which Antares shines bright**

* * *

 

"You looked _resplendent_ in that dress! Was that from our first trip to Petersburg?"

An assortment of faded, black and white photographs were scattered across Jane's rosewood desk. The one her brother had admired showed her in a court dress with trailing sleeves, a string of dainty pearls around her neck.

"1904. I was still wearing wigs back then, remember?"

Since women had worn their hair long for centuries, Jane's short cut made her stand out and was the source of many unwelcome questions in polite society. She was often asked if she had been sick, because it was the only reason why a girl would have her hair cut so scandalously short. Therefore, after slowly running out of illnesses to use, Jane had resorted to wearing wigs - reluctantly at first, but after a while she had come to love the feeling of soft hair brushing against her shoulders. Soon, her elaborate hairstyles were causing sensation whenever they went to the theater or attended a ball. In fact, she was the main reason why Alec knew how to French braid.

He was peering over her shoulder at the photographs, his fingers toying with the tube of the blood bag he was holding. He recognized himself and Corin on the terrace of a summer villa, made fun of a photo of himself wearing a sailor's uniform, paid compliments to another one where he and Jane were sharing a sofa and pretending to read from a book. He held a picture of a bonnet-wearing toddler up for closer inspection, but Jane snatched it back right away.

"Mine." After a few seconds of puzzled silence, she clarified: "It's Olga. She gave this to me as a present."

"Oh," was all that Alec replied. Jane had only one other photo of herself together with Olga, in which they were both wearing white dresses and holding hands. Olga was twelve, and looked much younger next to the unchildlike, rigid Jane. Although the photograph failed to capture their finer features, there was a striking distinction between the innocent child and the poised vampire. They had met when Olga's family was in vacation in Denmark, and although they had not spoken much at first, something like an odd friendship formed between the two. Alec would have never dared to use that word openly to describe the connection between Olga and Jane, but he did not know what else to call the twilight hours in which Jane walked on the beach with her doe eyed companion, or the way his sister's eyes lit up when recounting one of her many anecdotes to the enraptured girl across the dinner table. Had Olga's charm and adoration touched his twin's heart? Had the garnet brooch he saw pinned to her gauze dress not belonged to Jane? She denied it, and he wisely did not contradict her, but facts remained facts. And yet, when Jane joined him and Corin several weeks later on the ship which would carry them to England, there was no mention of Olga anymore. She disappeared into the glimmering mist of the past century, and time set its melancholic dust over her memory.

Jane finished placing the last photograph in her voluminous Art Nouveau album. She liked the soft, yellowed pages, the worn corners which she rubbed absently while looking at the images, and that unmistakable old book smell. She took one last breath of it before placing it back in its drawer and turning towards Alec. "We should go collect Corin and discuss the travel plans with her, just to be on the same page."

"Capital idea," agreed Alec and produced a blood bag from his pocket as an after-thought, which his sister accepted greedily. The two began making their way to the top of the Volturi tower.

"Is Pyatigorsk anywhere near the sea? I can't recall," pondered Jane.

"No, it's right in the middle of the North Caucasian Federal District. The Podkumok river passes through the city, if it's any consolation to you."

"No, it isn't. I miss the sea - don't you?"

" _The most beautiful tide is the sweep of your heart against mine._ "

"You have the soul of a poet."

"I have the soul of a parrot," corrected Alec. "I can only recite what I've read. Never written a line of poetry in my life."

The stairs stopped in front of an elaborately decorated wooden door, on which the twins knocked simultaneously. A gentle, airy voice beckoned them to come in.

The Wives' Room was illuminated by a myriad of stained glass lamps, their kaleidoscopic lights giving it the intimate, velvety feel of a boudoir. A subtle scent of wisteria and white musk wound itself around the visitors. Sulpicia was buried in the enormous, tasseled cushions of her chaise longue, book in hands and a bookmark between her teeth. A glass case filled with pinned silvery butterflies lay discarded next to her dangling foot.

"Good evening, Sul," greeted Jane politely and, after looking around, finally waved to Athenodora, who was up on the ceiling beams, fiddling with a rope from which a stuffed owl was hanging, its wings stretched out in dead flight.

"I thought they were extinct," pondered Alec, squinting at the bird.

"They are _now_!" laughed Athenodora sharply before jumping off the beams to admire her work. "Present from Errol, he found it gathering dust in one of his homes in London. Dear thing must be a hundred years old. If you are looking for Corin, she is up on the roof reading the stars. When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow, if all goes well. Do you want us to bring you something?"

Athenodora merely shook her head, which took the twins aback. Whenever they left on a journey, she would be the first to give them a list of things to visit and to bring back. Her demands could range from the benign, such as an interesting rock or a handful of sand, to the uncommon, such as a gas mask and a zebra skull to the downright bizarre, like the time where she asked for a Mongolian. Whenever possible, Athenodora's requests were fulfilled, and in a rare gesture of affection, the twins would try to collect other things that they believed would interest her. Alec still felt funny about the fierce kiss she gave him of the cheek when they came back with a set of genuine ancient Roman bracelets they had purchased on the black market in France.

And so even though it came as a surprise that she wanted nothing this time, both siblings made mental notes to return with something regardless. _Perhaps I could somehow bring her snow from the mountain_ , mused Jane.

They left the Wives' room through a small door hidden behind a heavy curtain and made their way up a narrow, winding set of stairs until they reached the top of the tower. Corin was crouched on the floor, gazing intently at the heavens through a sleek telescope.

"Antares shines bright tonight. Blood red and beautiful. It seems like you might be in for a good trip, Scorpios," she murmured.

Although Jane and Alec did not remember their exact date of birth, they knew they were born in the middle of autumn, and Corin wasted no time in placing them in the eight house of the zodiac. Moody, intense, passionate, sadistic, obsessive and excruciatingly alive - the scorpion, ruled by the gods of war and death, always with one foot in heaven and the other in hell, yet existing somewhere in-between. Jane and Alec mocked her occasionally, but it was so like _Corin_ to be fond of such things. Her curiosity for everything unusual, hidden or unproven was legendary. She had once dived down into the pits of the Atlantic for one whole month and broke a literal ton of high tech flashlights because of the pressure, but when she climbed up for the final time onto the ship which awaited her, she would not speak about what she had seen down there. Aro had to touch her hand, and even he was astonished, ultimately managing to nod his head and uttering a _Well, I wouldn't have thought.._.

This led to years of speculation among the Volturi, countless attempts at bribing the truth out of Corin and one member going missing when he dived in the same area. _Poor Theodore_ , thought Alec.

"Your pointless safari into astrology aside, we should go over the details for tomorrow's journey," advised Jane and kneeled next to her, to have a better view of the stars.

"What a world to live in," continued Corin, as if she hadn't heard Jane, which was a very brave move in Alec's opinion. "Do you know what I like about the moon and the stars?"

"I am sure you will tell us regardless of our tragically low interest," lamented Jane.

"Thousands of years, and yet they are still in the same place. Whenever I take my eyes off them and look at the world, everything is shifting, but those stars up there, they were the stars that everybody saw. My parents saw them, my siblings saw them, anyone I ever loved or hated or read about, they all saw the same stars. They are the only compass that we have in this world, the one respite from the waltz of life. It breaks my heart that they will one day wither and flicker out of the sky."

Jane was silent for a moment as she took a gulp of blood from her bag. When she was finished, she added: "That was so sappy that I think you can qualify as a house plant now."

" _Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars,"_ recited Alec, joining Jane on the tower floor.

"You two should live in my greenhouse," said Jane dryly.

Alec brought the tube of his bag to his lips and then left a bloody kiss mark on his sister's cheek. In return, she squirted blood into his eye, which he did not evade out of courtesy.

"I have checked with Procurement and our travel documents and visas are up to date. The only problem we need to solve is the stranger's lack of any kind of identification. Having one made for him would take weeks even under the best of circumstances, and we do not have the time. Therefore, we will have to improvise."

"I love it when this phrase comes up in our conversations," grinned Corin.

Jane continued unperturbed: "I was thinking about pulling a David for this. It would save us a lot of trouble with airport security and speaking of which, our best bet would be going to Fiumincio Airport and then flying to Moscow."

"Ooh, we haven't pulled a David in a long time! I bet I can get him to strip naked!" cried Corin, cutting off an equally enthusiastic-looking Alec from voicing the very same idea. He closed his mouth in obvious disappointment. Jane swatted away a mosquito who was screeching around her ear, maddened by the smell of blood surrounding her, and instantly regretted it when she examined the palm of her hand and saw that her lightning strike had brought a dozen small bugs as collateral damage. Resigned, she wiped her hand on her dress and rose to her feet.

"We leave the stranger to your capable and terrifying hands. We are going down to pack."

Corin gave her most charming wink at Jane and then watched the siblings disappear into the darkness of the tower. Returning to her telescope, she marveled at the cold, silvery glow of the moon and whispered to herself:

 

_"I saw above a sea of hills_

_A solitary planet shine,_

_And there was no one, near or far,_

_to keep the world from being mine."_

 

* * *

 

The chamber he had been asked to wait in was cool and dry. Two fish were chasing each others' tails in a mosaic on the floor. He had come to know every piece of it by heart thanks to his nervous pacing. It was all too much for a hermit like him - the long, arduous trip to Italy, the hours spent buried in forest soil and hiding in abandoned buildings, the overwhelming sea of people he saw and was forced to talk to, the confusion he felt in this world which had become completely foreign to him...

The unfamiliar scents and sounds of the city unsettled him, as did the sleek devices that people had in their hands and ears all the time. The women walked around with so little on that he cringed in shame whenever he passed them by. He longed for the wilderness of his peaceful mountains, where only the wind and the sound of snow falling from branches broke the silence. Decades of solitude had made the simple act of communication difficult, and he felt like a cripple learning how to walk after an accident: tense, awkward, painfully aware of his missteps.

He tried to pray, but was dismayed when he realized that he was much too shaken to feel what he was uttering. In the heart of his mountain, he could lift his prayers to the heavens effortlessly, but here in this strange land, his thoughts hung heavy around him like flightless birds nesting anxiously in the tangles of his mind. He scratched an absent itch on his face, a nervous habit he had unknowingly kept from the days when his heart was still beating. He knew he had done the right thing, and yet he could not escape the feeling that he had unlocked the door of a cage and sent something terrible and ancient howling into the night.

When Afton entered the room, he was faced with a sorry sight: he had never seen a vampire look that _exhausted_ , and he had been a witness to the Great Discussion of 1877, when Caius and Aro went off a tangent during a meeting and nobody could leave the Main Hall for seventy five hours.

After apologizing for keeping him waiting, Afton placed the cardboard box he had been carrying on the floor. "I have prepared some clothes for your journey. And dinner."

Timur picked one of the blood bags from the box and sniffed at it in what he was hoping was not a suspicious manner.

"It's pig and chicken's blood, the only things we could cook up at a moment's notice," explained Afton and added with a half-smile: "Meanwhile, some butcher's shop in Volterra probably thinks we are preparing for a dark ritual."

He got no reaction from Timur, who was busy gulping down his meal. However, Afton watched him for a while, and once his guest's hunger had subsided, he asked: "If I may ask, are your scars self-inflicted?"

The startled look on Timur's face confirmed his theory. "I once saw a vampire driven so mad by hunger that he bashed his head open like a watermelon." He did not add that it had been one of Aro's many experiments. "What made you stop?"

"Animals nearby," was all that Timur responded, obviously uncomfortable.

Picking up on that, Afton abandoned the topic and pointed to the clothes in the box. "We will pack your robe and the rest, but you should wear modern clothing if you want to blend in."

At that moment, Afton's wife Chelsea poked her head through the door and asked if they needed more time.

"No, honey, we're almost done. I will just leave our guest to change and then we can set off."

They left as Timur was examining the clothes that had been prepared for him. It was only after they were far enough that she whispered in a conspiratory tone:

"Nice touch on the Metallica t-shirt."

 

* * *

 

The captain poked at the statue uncertainly, a shade of disbelief on his face. He gripped the statue's arm to feel its texture, and seemed surprised at its hardness. The statue, he had been told, was part of an art exhibition in Moscow, and it was a marvelously realistic depiction of a gaunt man sitting down with his legs crossed and his hands covering his face. It also sparkled in the morning sun. "What material is this, Mrs. Loren?" he inquired, his eyes still on the strange piece of art.

"It is a mixture which I have recently developed," answered the pretty lady, who was shrouded in diaphanous clothing and shielded her face from the sun under a wide-brimmed hat. He could see his reflection in her expensive-looking aviator glasses. Her stunning twin children, equally bundled up in scarves, gloves and sailor hats, were sharing a comically large parasol and looked very fresh in spite of the heat. Sun allergy, very unfortunate.

The husband had already boarded the plane before sunrise to check if all the windows had been properly covered. Satisfied with his inspection, the captain motioned for the statue to be loaded in the baggage area and allowed everyone to board, and the odd family went under the makeshift covered pathway erected especially for them and entered the small plane headed for Moscow.

"What a life!" Alec sighed contentedly as Jane's fingers combed through his hair. He had been lying with his head in her lap for the past two hours, his legs hanging over the leather armrest.

"One more hour to go," noted Corin without looking away from the game of cards she was playing with Felix. "I do hope our guest is doing alright."

"No screams have reached our ears so I reckon everything is good" replied Felix, frowning over his cards.

They had done their best to help Timur survive the trip: he was offered detailed descriptions and explanations about plane travel, and he was even made to listen to an audio recording taken from within a cargo hold, so that the noise would not make him panic. He could, however, not be persuaded to take off his shirt in order to appear more convincing as a statue. Corin lost two bags of O-negative to Felix on that one. Timur went through all the preparations (which had been done in Russian, thanks to their attention to detail) with the stoicism of a student.

The people from Security and Defense were uneasy about letting him alone in the cargo hold, on the grounds that if he panicked and tore a hole in the plane, they would have a horrendous mess on their hands. The Volturi rarely used planes to get around because of how difficult it was to deal with the aftermath of a plane crash. Explaining survivors was as difficult and attention-grabbing as missing bodies. This led to the leaders declaring planes to be emergency transports, which meant they were a rare treat for the likes of Jane and Alec.

"What do you think we will find once we get there?" Corin placed two cards down and made Felix wince.

"A challenge, I hope," offered Jane, who had been making the best of the trip and spent her whole time looking outside at the sea of clouds stretching below the horizon. "What _I_ would like to know is what they are looking for. Twenty one vampires on a mountain in Russia, looking for something they want so badly that they are working in shifts to search for it. I think it is possible that they are looking for something within the city and are using the mountain as a gathering point. We could get more information if we nabbed one of them while in the city. We cannot know for sure how many there really are, since we only know what the hermit saw."

"So we grab a pair while they're away from the mountain and we squeeze them for infos," concluded Felix and folded.

"Since the hermit saw them repeatedly," continued Jane, "it means that one or two routes down the mountain are being constantly used. That could be our starting point."

"I would go for the blond guy with the cellphone," mused Corin.

"Not a bad idea. It all comes down to how fast we want to move. The hermit saw this guy only once, but he might have taken another route, so stumbling onto him might be quite easy for all we know. We need to get there and perform some reconnaissance beforehand."

Alec simply purred in agreement and turned his head on one side so that Jane's fingers could spoil him more.

"And what is your contribution to all of this, brother?"

"My boyish charm," replied Alec and placed Jane's delicate hand on his cheek.

 

* * *

 

They landed one hour later in a rainy and gloomy airport Moscow, where they had to wait half an hour for their connecting flight. They watched Timur being rolled out of the cargo hold, looking much the same as he had been on departure. Corin went out to him and had a brief whispered conversation while Jane and Alec were fighting their boredom by playing a trivia game.

"Dacian goddess of the forests."

"Bendis. Point. Ancient, trumpet-like Greek instrument."

"Salpinx. Point. The color of Alexander the Great's eyes was blue or brown?"

"Trick question. Brown _and_ blue - his eyes had different colors. I get two points, you sneak."

"Fair enough," conceded Jane, running a hand through her pale brown hair, which her brother tousled immediately afterwards. "Last Romanov archduchess to be murdered," she said after escaping Alec's fingers.

"Olga. Point. How many children did Joffre Borgia have?"

"Three. Point. What did we have for dinner that one time at Lady Anstruther in 1898?"

"Vermicelli soufflé, and it was horrible. Had to shove a wooden spoon down my throat to fish the pieces out afterwards." Alec crinkled his nose at the memory.

At that moment, Corin approached them together with Felix, looking as glamorous as a movie star. She had felt it was safe enough to remove her hat and was wiping raindrops off her sunglasses with her scarf. A few airport attendants were gaping at her.

"Timur says he is alright, so we are good to go. In about two hours we will land on Mineralnye Vody Airport, and from there we can reach Pyatigorsk in thirty minutes. We will have a van waiting for us."

Alec was about to ask why a van, but caught himself when he remembered that Timur could cease his act only after they had safely left the airport. Security cameras everywhere.

"Wish we had time to see Moscow again," said Jane with a sigh so soft, only her brother caught it. "I miss the palaces."

Alec understood her - he also missed the nights in which he and his twin half would waltz around the gilded halls of the tsarist palaces, among thousands of officers in uniform and perfumed, silken ladies in their splendid court dresses, fragrant plum blossoms in their hair.

His memories of Jane laughing in delight and looking heartbreakingly lovely in her blue velvet gown were wrapped in the whispery sounds of lace trains sweeping across marble floors and sharp sabers brushing against cloth, secure in their bejeweled sheaths. And out of all, Jane's eyes stood out to him the most, clear and bright, the color of roses after rain. She looked only twelve, but there were already several young noblemen around her, entranced by the way she danced, as if the music was flowing directly out of her heart, or dazed by the way her topaz necklace nestled between the moon white porcelain valley of her collarbone. Alec only needed to close his eyes to hear the violins sing again and to feel Jane's gloved hands in his own. And although he did not tell her any of that, because there was a greedy part of Alec that kept memories of Jane locked away in his mind, gleeful at the thought that they belong to him only, he became encompassed by a sense of nostalgia and mollified into silence. They got up, moved onto the awaiting plane and settled down for the flight. They decided to eat and opened the blood stash Corin had packed in cherry soda cans.

"Do you ever wonder what happened to your Olga?" asked Alec after resting his head on Jane's knees and burying his nose in the gossamer flowers of her dress.

"You're tickling me with your nose," she chuckled and tried squirming away.

"You never told me how she was," added Alec as an after thought, after taking a sip of blood through a precarious balancing act.

"She was _delicious_ ," answered Jane, the ghost of a half-smile on her face.

Alec's surprise was muffled by the sound of raindrops splashing against the plane windows.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter IV**

 

* * *

**In which blood is spilled**

* * *

 

The car smelled strongly of gas and dust, and it made Jane wonder what Procurement was thinking when they booked it. The driver was a stout man wearing a track suit and an old red cap with the name of some regional football team on it. She had come to know about the team because he would not shut up about it, which was difficult for Jane because she was not used to not killing people who annoyed her this much. The dotted Minnie Mouse dress she had changed into was so low quality that it left her skin itchy. She picked at a loose thread already hanging out from her sleeve and sighed audibly. The Russian countryside was rolling gently outside the tinted windows. Jane remembered the Russian empire as a series of glamorous cities, glittering pinpoints on a vast and wild landscape, vividly coloured by the stark difference between rich and poor.

The grandeur of tsarist Russia appealed to her secretly still-impressionable core, and she saw only the jewels and the laces and the young officers and had little interest in the abject poverty under which the illiterate and overworked masses were suffering. Unlike Corin, Jane was the kind of person who spoke to anyone outside the aristocratic circle only through a carriage window.

She had left Petersburg one particularly sharp winter, the kind where whole villages got swallowed by the snows, with an entire convoy of luggage and tortured her human entourage with her ambitious schedule. She only relented when Alec got tired of his eyeballs frosting over and over again, and they waited the worst of the weather out at an inn, where she was dismayed to realize that half her porcelain trinkets had cracked in the cold.

The reason for their departure was that Jane had grown too irritated with the ingrained, condescending way others would talk to her. It had been a staple throughout the ages. She was female, and had the appearance of a young girl, which meant that even those who genuinely meant no harm would see her as nothing more than an agreeable little pet and talk to her about the dullest topics and needlessly explain everything to her. It was incredibly annoying. One of the many reasons her place in the Volturi guard pleased her beyond measure was that nobody would dare to treat her like a child. She had gotten more respect in her vampire society than a former peasant girl like her could have ever hoped to acquire across the centuries sweeping over the human world.

After an hour and a half on the road, they passed the sign welcoming them into the city of Pyatigorsk, one of the oldest and most sought after spa cities in Russia, where the aristocracy would travel to soothe their ailing bodies. It was raining heavily, so Jane rolled down the window to allow some air into the car. A gust of deliciously fresh mountain air blew in, mingled with the smell of pine needles. She drew closer to the window and gazed at the snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance.

"This city has a Lermontov Museum," noted Alec while scrolling through his phone.

"I am more of a Zhukovsky fan, but we can still go if we wrap this quickly enough," promised Corin.

They passed verdant parks, glass galleries and ugly communist-era blocks until they reached an intersection. The driver rolled down his window and called out to a young man who was leaning against the wall of a convenience store. The man ran to the car and exchanged a few words with him. The delay was just long enough for a traffic officer to notice Corin's lovely head through the open window, and signaled the driver to pull over. It was not uncommon for people to notice the vampires' stunning good looks and to try to hold them in their sight for a little longer. The bank clerk might pretend to have trouble spelling a name, the shop assistant might take a little longer thinking about whether they did have that dress in a certain size, a gas station attendant might try to cram as much chitchat in-between receiving and handing the credit card back. Although rarely ill-intended, police officers made use of their authority the most often, and this time was no exception. Corin had been gazing at a faded billboard and when her eyes locked with the policeman's, it was already too late. He was approaching the car.

After exchanging a few greeting words with the driver and asking for his papers, he searched the faces of everyone present. Corin smiled widely at him, and he smiled back and asked her where they were coming from. After hearing their departure point, he asked to search the van. The driver and everyone else got out, leaving the doors open. Jane looked around the street. An elderly woman was limping stoically under a cheap umbrella. A young man, his hair slick with gel, ran past her, carrying a red rose. A dirty-faced boy, with crumbs around his mouth, was hiding from the rain under the sun-blinds of a pastry shop.

Felix was facing towards the man and letting his natural vampiric deterrents work on him. The sooner he subconsciously noticed the unnerving stillness, the impossibly flawless skin and the unusual self-confidence that could only exude from someone who knew that nothing in the world could hurt him, the sooner his brain would send out warning signals, and they would be left in peace. They would be miles away before the police officer would start analyzing why he had felt so ill at ease around that unbelievable family.

As the officer was checking Corin's passport under Felix's cold eyes, and the twins were looking at the window shop of a library, nobody noticed the young boy sneaking close to the van. By the time Jane glimpsed his skinny arm grabbing the bag from the back seat, it was already too late. He swung it off and turned to make a run for it, when he nearly collided with a red Volkswagen Polo whose driver was startled when the boy made a dash from the van. The four vampires took exactly three seconds to assess the situation. Although it was raining heavily, the intersection had other cars, and there were plenty of passersby on the sidewalk. Alec spotted two security cameras, and did not bother to take into account the dashboard cams. They all decided with one glance _: Not worth it. Let it happen._ The car missed the urchin, but hit the bag out of his hand, sending a spray of red onto the wet asphalt. The vampires eyed the growing red stains dolefully, and held their breaths.

The officer ran to the boy and grabbed the back of his faded shirt, while his little captive was shrieking something in a dialect. Corin looked like she longed to _be_ one of the crushed cans. Alec winced when a second car went over the bag, squeezing more of its precious contents onto the street. The rain was diluting and spreading the blood, tickling their nostrils and filling their mouths with venom. _It's alright_ , thought Jane _, none of us are really hungry and if we are careful, we_ … her train of thought stopped when she saw her brother looking like he was witnessing a disaster in slow-motion. She turned her head towards where he was staring, and the cold realization poured over her with icy swiftness: _Timur is in the back of the van. He's never smelled so much human blood before._

She grabbed Alec's hand and shot him a panicked look. _Stun him, stun him, do it now!_ she whispered almost hysterically. Alec's eyes were already still with concentration, and Jane turned towards Felix and sent a light bolt of pain straight through his head. Felix clutched at his temple for a moment and looked bewildered over his shoulder at Jane. Realization dawned on his face. If Alec was too late in cutting Timur's senses off, he would need to restrain him before he burst out of the van and his mouth and hands ripped every human in the intersection to shreds.

As Felix headed for the back of the van, the officer had lifted the thieving boy over to the sidewalk and was telling him off. He managed to catch a glimpse of Felix right as he was about to disappear behind the van and opened his mouth to say something, when his little captive let out a pitiful cry of pain and crumpled down like a rag on the ground. He knelt down immediately and lifted the boy up by his shoulders and urged him to tell him what happened. Behind him, Felix had already opened the door of the van. Jane turned her torturous focus away from the child and waited with a lump in her throat for Felix to return.

The inside of the van stank of rust and dirt. Felix climbed up inside and lifted the canvas off the cage-like box where Timur had been stored. When he lifted the lid, a pair of startled eyes fixated on him. "Don't breathe," said Felix immediately. "Blood outside," he uttered with his last remaining breath of air. Timur nodded, but seemed so thoroughly alarmed by the news that Felix scratched the words _Nobody is hurt_ in Russian on the inside of one of the wooden planks. Timur looked like he didn't believe him at all, but it all soon ceased to matter as his eyes suddenly went wide and he leaned back against the wall of the crate, overtaken by Alec's powers. Relieved, Felix placed the lid and the canvas back on and got out into the street.

The disoriented-looking little urchin had managed to get back on his feet and was breathing in deep gulps of air. Corin was doing her best to convince the policeman to let them go, telling him that they had an exhibition to attend. "And we want nothing with the boy, sir, this is a colossal waste of our time. We are already late and my children are tired," she frowned slightly, gesturing towards Jane who had clung morosely to her brother to mask his rigid posture and concentration.

At that point, even the officer felt like their encounter was perhaps not proving to be of the best kind, and told the driver to go on. He placed the now shivering boy in the back of his car to take him to the hospital, and the vampires all climbed back in, hair slick and clothes clinging to their bodies. Corin insisted to ride in the back with her precious sculpture, to the surprise of the driver, who wanted to say something, but one strange look from Corin silenced him. The others knew that she did not want Timur to be alone when he woke up.

As the vehicle began making its way through the city, she explained to him what had happened with as much humor as she could muster, resting her arms on the edge of the crate, her hair spilling like seaweed. "Things like this happen sometimes. Could have been worse. Constantinople fell to the Ottomans because someone forgot to lock a gate."

"It was dark, why was it so dark," Timur kept repeating, touching his arms and his head to assure himself of his senses. To Corin, he looked like a frightened rabbit in that cage.

"I apologize for that. We were afraid you would smell the blood and maybe hurt someone. You see, Alec has the power to... make vampires sleep. We thought it would be the best for everybody involved."

Corin could then almost see the understanding dawning on his face and then slithering down into his stomach, where it would tighten painfully. Their companion was only now beginning to understand how dangerous they were, and he knew only about Alec's power. For a vampire, always accustomed to functioning perfectly in every moment, the first taste of cutting of the senses was always a horrible shock. The raw sensation of vulnerability that arose from knowing that for a time, they were at the world's mercy and they could not defend themselves or stop their would be witcher in any way was a splash of cold terror that no vampire would get over too soon. Corin understood and sympathized. She had asked Alec once to cut off her senses and he obliged, but it had happened in the presence of Aro - as they both shared a vivid curiosity - and deep in her heart, Corin was aware that she would have never agreed to the procedure if the only ones in the room were the twins. She found the lack of sensation deeply unsettling because of the unbearable silence it brought along. The perfect nothingness was disorienting; with nothing to hear, see or feel, something began to tug at her sense of self. She felt as if she did not have a body anymore, but her mind could not comprehend a state where she would not have a vessel to reside in, and for a few increasingly agonizing minutes she alternated between feeling that she _was_ the enormous darkness surrounding her and feeling that she was disintegrating away, layer by layer. By the time she had returned, she knew that she would never want to repeat the experience ever again.

As Corin continued to soothe her frightened companion, the van sped along through the city, in which old, charming buildings with delicate white arches and chalk-blue facades mingled with bulky, soviet era hotels and apartment blocks. The rain dulled the vibrance of the colors and gave the world a gentle blur, which made Jane want to rest her head against Alec's shoulder. Instead, she fished out her cellphone from the pocket of her dress and checked their location on the map. In less than half an hour, they would be at the warehouse. Felix was playing cards with Alec, and was trying to get him to bet one of his da Vinci sketches.

"Why do you even want it? You stayed behind to watch a street brawl when we went to meet him!" Alec pointed out, placing a card down.

"They were fighting each other with _roasted chicken legs_!" Felix defended himself.

Alec paused for a second with his cards against his lips, intrigued, but Jane intervened: "He just wants to trade your sketch for Renata's portrait of Caterina Sforza, which he will then trade with Giovanni's ancient map of Cappadocia," she explained, accurately summing up the Volturi barter system.

"What is in Cappadocia?" inquired Alec.

"Was," corrected Felix with an air of longing. "A girl with eyes black as coal and the greatest tits you could ever imagine."

Alec chuckled. Jane looked very sorry that he asked.

"Her hair smelled like white musk and her mouth smelled like coffee and she wore a belt with turquoise stones hanging from it, and they moved with every sway of her hips. And she had the kind of fire in her eyes that makes men lose their heads and throw themselves into the flame."

In spite of his growing interest, Alec noticed that his twin's silence had been growing a sullen tone. He wanted to listen to Felix, because the things he spoke about intrigued him, but he knew Jane was sensitive. She would never be a woman, just like he would never be a man. Felix spoke of scents and curves and the way women looked at him. Few women would look this way at Alec, trapped in the body of a boy too young to stir any interest. The women who _did_ look like that at him, disturbed him on principle. He knew that he and his twin were a pedophile's wet dream: beautiful youths who never aged. He had heard of men and women among the vampire folk who kept one or more young-looking vampires as their harems, and he felt lucky to have his powers and the protection of the Volturi.

"I am not betting anything my friend, might as well give up. A da Vinci would be tragically wasted on you. Besides, I want to trade it myself one of these days. Meishan says that she can draw me a perfect sketch of Daji in exchange, and then we can all see if she was as lovely as history claims her to be."

"Roasted. Chicken. Legs. There were black eyes afterwards. I think somebody lost a tooth," Felix reiterated.

Alec laughed and folded.

 

* * *

 

Jane stepped out into the dampness of the warehouse. It was a large, mostly empty building on a secluded lot, close to the mountains. The rain pounded against the dirty windows, and the smell of dust and decay permeated the air. Old tools and various discarded car parts were rusting along the walls and large spider nets were collecting dried up flies in every corner. A modest-looking Lada 4 X4 was waiting for them. Felix went inside the van and pulled out their precious crate while Corin thanked the driver and dismissed him. The man widened his eyes at the very generous tip he received and offered his services anytime before departing in his van.

Once they made sure they were alone, they gave Timur the signal, and he got out of the crate and dressed. The familiar smell of his region seemed to calm him down and bring him a measure of relief, but he still kept his distance from Jane when she showed him their location on her cell phone. Yes, he knew where they were. Yes, he knew how to get to the road that led to the mountains.

Felix fished for the key hidden inside the Lada, turned the engine on and waited for his companions to get in the car. A suitcase with practical mountain clothing was in the back seat, and hiking boots were stored in the trunk. Everybody climbed inside and began to rummage through the clothes. Jane pulled a faded beanie over her head, and Alec tied the sleeves of an oversized shirt around his waist. Meanwhile, Corin had already zipped herself up in a cheap Adidas knockoff running jacket. As they were winding up the road leading to the mountains, the group descended into concentrated silence. Felix kept his eyes on the road, but everybody else scanned the woods carefully, hoping to catch a glimpse of their targets.

Felix parked the car in a lot close to a restaurant, and then proceeded to equip himself with the hiking boots. As he was tying his shoelaces, he glanced at his little band of companions - they all looked like a normal family about to go for a hike - even Timur looked somewhat appropriate, in an eccentric-uncle sort of way.

"Take us to the where the vampire route down the mountain ends, Timur. The sooner we have results, the better," encouraged Corin, her eyes glinting in the gathering darkness.

The hermit nodded and began to make his way through the pine trees, careful to keep a human pace. The night was encroaching upon them, hiding them from human eyes. They soon began to run up the stony slopes, the fresh smell of the wilderness filling their nostrils. Alec loved it, for it reminded him of the forests of his boyhood, and of a time in which life was still full of wonder.

They reached the place soon enough, and climbed up on the strong branches of three neighbored fir trees. There was no trace of a foreign vampire scent in the air. "It seems like they haven't been here in a while," Felix whispered, watching a fox sneaking cautiously on the ground below.

"We just need to wait," answered Corin, scanning the sea of trees in front of her. "Something will stir here sooner or later."

 

* * *

 

On the third day of waiting, Corin suggested they change location. They had been watching hikers and animals from various points across the area, but nothing unusual seemed to catch their watchful eye. It was perhaps time to explore other possible routes within the mountain. Normally, Felix would have suggested that they split up to cover more ground, but his main task was to protect the twins, and he did not want to risk sending Corin out there alone. And so they moved across the forest to another side of the mountain, but this change brought little reward: the fact that Alec accidentally stepped on a gopher aside, nothing interesting happened. On the fifth day, after combing the forests assiduously, the vampires seemed not much closer to their goal than the evening they arrived. And of course, there was another important matter at hand.

"I'm hungry," Jane declared, rearranging her beanie. "We need to eat something."

Her companions, sans Timur, seemed to agree. The hermit had been living off a steady diet of foxes, rabbits and small rodents, and his eyes remained golden.

"I don't want to split up, so it would be easiest to find some hikers. However, that might attract search parties and spook our hidden friends," mused Corin.

Behind her, Timur gave her a stunned look.

"We might have to go down and eat. If we are quick enough, we could be back in three hours. We could leave Timur here to keep an eye out. Oh, if only that little rat hadn't destroyed our blood stash..."

"Spilled milk, Corin," Felix gave her a friendly pat on the back and grabbed Alec, hoisting him over his shoulder playfully and ignoring his attempts at extracting himself. From a distance, they seemed like a family who was preparing to head home after a fun day in the mountains. Corin and Jane prepared to follow when Timur's strangled voice came from behind them.

"Wait."

Four pairs of dark eyes turned towards him. He had been very quiet during their wait, only talking when being talked to. But now, it seemed he had something important to say.

"Yes, Timur, what is it?"

"Don't kill people in my city. There are animals here, you can eat them instead."

"My friend, we do not share the same diet. Animal blood is simply repellent to us," explained Corin.

"I have family in that city."

"Tell us their ages, how they look and where they live and we will make sure not to choose someone who resembles them."

"Killing people will cause trouble."

"We are really good at picking and hiding targets, I assure you."

"It's wrong. Murder is wrong. It's against God and man and everything good." Every word seemed like a great effort on his part, and his voice was unsteady.

"Then why is our intended diet human blood?" shot back Jane, visibly annoyed.

"Timur," Corin interjected gently, "there aren't enough small animals in these woods to feed all of us, and we prefer human blood. It makes us stronger and I see no need to exterminate this mountains' small wildlife when four humans could solve the problem for a week. Us being here aims to chase away the other vampires, who are plaguing the city right now. The sooner we find them, the sooner we leave and the city can return to its normal life again. But for that, we need to eat, and we need to eat now, before things get out of hand."

Before they knew it, the hermit had rushed in front of them, looking terrified out of his mind, but with an almost suicidal determination on his face. " I cannot allow you to harm people. I beg of you, feed off the animals."

Felix had placed Alec down, and was waiting for him to cut off Timur's senses so that they may hunt in peace. They just needed to postpone the conflict until his mist had the chance to reach the brave, but foolish monk.

"I will not let you. You can have my life, but I will not let you kill anyone," Timur said in a trembling voice. The intensity in his eyes betrayed the seriousness of his words.

"Get out of our way!" Jane ordered, her eyes narrowed.

Corin opened her mouth to say something, when she heard the earth rumble. All four of the Volturi members turned to see a great wall of earth rising before them like a terrible wave in a storm, lifting up rocks and trees and darkening the sky above. A patch of color caught Corin's eye and she saw the blond young man with the cellphone and the masked Roma woman standing on the edge of the cliff above them, but she did not have time to regret their mistake before the wave smashed into them and the earth swallowed them all.

 


	5. Chapter V

**Chapter V**

* * *

  **In which all is rust and stardust**

* * *

 

 

_Alec! Where are you?_

  
Jane couldn't move. There was darkness on all sides, and her mouth was filled with earth. She had no idea how deep the landslide had buried her, but she knew she was not close to the surface from the immense pressure threatening to crush her small frame. She had tried to push her limbs in all directions, but every time she met with a colossal mass which resisted her vampire strength.

  
_Alec!_ she called again in her mind, to no avail. There was no answer coming from her half. _What do I do?_ she thought, despairingly. _What if I never get out? It could take months or years before somebody digs us out - if there is anyone else left to dig out - oh please, not him, take me instead, anything but him, anything at all, everything!!... What if they are too late and then they’ll find a wretched beast, driven to frenzy by the thirst? My own coven will have to put me down like an animal. This is not the way to die! Alec! ALEC!_ she screamed in her mind, as loudly as she could.

  
_I cannot feel him._

  
A sob died in her throat, crushed by the constricting ground in which she was lost. For the first time, she wished she was like the vampires of lore, like Carmilla, who could slither through earth to reach her coffin and rise again to leave the soil undisturbed. But alas, she was not the Countess of Karnstein of which LeFanu wrote, she was Jane of the Volturi Guard, and she would find a way out. She began spinning plans in her mind. If it would continue to rain, then perhaps the soil would become soft enough to burrow through, and once she figured out which way was up, she could get out and look for her brother and _please be fine, Alec, I will go mad if you're not. There's no point anymore if you're not there, don't you see?_

  
Jane's thoughts froze when she felt something crawl around one of her fingers. Her first instinct was to flinch, but she couldn't, and the thing continued to coil around her index finger undisturbed. _Earthworm! Does this mean I am close to the surface? They cannot burrow deeper than several feet..._

  
The thought of freedom gave her hope, and she tried again to move her limbs, only to be met with the same resistance as before. Then she remembered that the little creature was most likely misplaced when the layer of soil it was in was thrown off by their attackers. The earth in her mouth had been now reduced to liquid thanks to her venom, and she struggled to spit it out. She never thought she would end up like this. Her thoughts flew to one of her Master's experiments, who ended up smashing his own head in to put an end to the agony of his thirst. She did not have that luxury now. She felt some of her venom tickle down through her nose. _I am with my head down, otherwise it would have went down my throat_ , she thought. Information about where she was helped her calm down.

  
With a start, she realized she had completely lost track of time. How long had it been since the landslide swallowed them all? Hours? Days? The burning in her throat was getting worse, and judging by the patterns of her thirst, Jane estimated at least four hours. Her pampered lifestyle had all but made sure that she would not be ready to go thirsty. _I can't do this, I'll go crazy if I do_ , thought Jane. _I'll count the minutes_. She began to count mechanically, with clock-like precision, trying to keep the hunger and the hysteria at bay. _Master..._ The thought came uninvited into her resisting mind, breaking her concentration. The thought of not seeing the man who saved her life and gave it back to her clad in iron and fire, the man whom she owed everything to... _You gave my life meaning, Master. If there was ever a hero who saved a little girl from the world, it was you. No marching army fending off the attackers of a besieged city, no ancient Perseus slaying the sea monster and casting the chains off a pale Andromeda... no man was ever more a savior than you were to me._

 

_You bound strong sandals on my feet,_

  
_You gave me bread and wine,_

  
_And sent me under sun and stars,_

  
_For all the world was mine._

 

 _I want to see you again, Master. I want to go home_ , Jane pleaded. Home was the Main Hall of the Volturi, where she would sit in a place of honor next to her Master, where her thoughts and voice were respected and cherished. Home was her chambers in the Volterra keep, with their thick burgundy carpets and sandalwood bookshelves and the rays of the setting sun passing through the dusty, filigreed glass of her greenhouse. Home was her desk, filled with sketches and photographs, mismatched earrings and gloves, the locket with a piece of her mother's dress. And most of all, home was Alec, with his boyish smile and his sharp shoulders and soft hands.

 

_Oh, take the sandals off my feet,_

  
_You know not what you do;_

  
_For all my world is in your arms_

  
_My sun and stars are you._

 

At second number sixteen thousand, six hundred and eighty-three, the reality of her situation finally struck her in full. She was a starving, buried alive vampire and she would never get out in time to save her sanity or see her brother and maybe that was all she could have. She had lived for hundreds of years and had lifetimes of happiness and adoration and maybe that was the price. At one point or another, the inevitable happens. You make a mistake, you're in the wrong place, the wrong time, you look the wrong way. Even after all this time, her Master spoke about how much he regrets sending the gifted Aemilia to Pompeii the day the volcano erupted and turned her into ash together with thousands of unfortunates still stuck in the city.

  
The clock is ticking for all, and her clock would soon stop and be slowly wound up to the point where it would burst in a flourish of wheels and cogs. She could hear its rhythmic ticking already, it was the sound of- it was a _sound_! The noise was the one resembling a shovel, and before she knew it, something hit her back, then grabbed her by her jacket and then she was out from the earth and drawn up towards the weeping sky, venom and mud pouring from her mouth, dirty but alive, and she rushed like a frightened animal into the arms of Felix who, disheveled and filthy after hours of frantic digging, cradled the girl in his arms, for in that moment she was back to being a girl, close to the one she had been on the stake.

  
"It's alright, I got you. It's alright," he said over and over, and for one moment, they were human again.

 

* * *

 

A soft rain was falling from the overcast sky above. The muddied hole in front of Jane was slowly collecting water at the bottom. She and Felix had been working together for the past ten hours, trying to dig out Alec. She was almost completely covered in mud, and Felix looked even worse. They had taken breaks only to hunt, and Jane was currently sucking on the neck of a fox. It would not be enough, she knew, but they had to get Alec out.

  
"How did you find me?" she had inquired minutes after she had been rescued from her grave. All around her were the remnants of the landslide which had uprooted trees, rocks and effectively changed the face of the slope they had been on. The cliff, empty now, stood looming in front of them, having been stripped of its earthly cover by a frightening power.

  
"I jumped up into the air at the last moment when I saw the wave. I figured that if one of us makes it through, then we can all be saved. I was still taken over by the landslide, but I wasn't buried deep so I clawed my way out when the rain intensified. Then I checked my phone and it was still working, so I was able to track the location of your phone. I figured I should get you out first because if those guys came back again, your gift would be more immediately effective than Alec's."

  
Being no strangers to technology, the Volturi had a small, but dedicated IT department who had been tasked with creating a mobile phone application that could track down the location of certain phones as long as a transmitter was still inside them. The lost phones did not even have to be functional, as long as the transmitter was still intact and within a one-mile radius. It had now proven to be a literal life saver, even though Felix still swore the department came up with it just so its head, Julius, could finally keep track of his own phone.

  
Jane tossed the carcass aside and began digging anew, throwing heaps of mud over her wet shoulders. She had to find Alec so that the pain in her chest would stop tearing at her. Corin was also buried in there somewhere, but they had to get Alec out first, she had told Felix, who knew better than to argue. She made a frustrated sound as the wall of the hole they had dug collapsed on top of her and splattered her with lumps of soaked earth. Pine branches were visible from the caved wall, marks of the ruin caused by the enemy.

  
"We need to make it stable, Jane. Pat the wall sometimes, like you would be making a well," Felix advised. "I can't _believe_ it," he continued, pushing his hair out of his eyes and smearing it with dirt at the same time. "They ripped the entire blanket of earth from the cliff and the slope and threw it on us. This kind of power makes me uneasy."

  
"Master needs to know of this. Can we call him?" asked Jane, stabbing the ground fiercely with her little hands.

  
"I don't have any reception here. We can go down the mountain after we've gotten everyone." He thought for a moment, and added: "I say we cleave the monk."

  
"I will make him swallow his eyes," Jane agreed. "How far along is he, we've been at it for hours, Felix!"

  
"Keep going, Jane. That's what I told myself when I was digging for you."

 

"...thank you."

  
The words were uttered awkwardly, as Jane was not used to saying thank you to anyone but her twin and her Master. Felix smiled uneasily and continued to dig. He felt through the mud and tore a large branch out of it and was preparing to throw it to the side when he heard Jane gasp. "Over there!" What appeared to be an elbow was poking out from the blurry pool at their feet. Jane rushed to it and frantically began to claw through the ground, shouting her brother's name. Felix joined her efforts and after a few moments, they were both pulling a dirty figure out from its prison.

  
"What is this?" Jane stammered as she stared at the lean figure of Corin. The once beautiful woman looked devastated, in a strangled, voiceless way. Her large eyes were wandering from Jane's face to Felix's, who then placed his big hands on either side of her head and gave her a gentle smile. "It's over, you're out now. You are still here, with us. Are you with me, Corin?"

 

Jane witnessed the scene with a look of incomprehension on her face. Finally, she uttered: "Where is my brother? Did the app get confused? Check your phone again and show me where Alec is, don't just _stand there_!"

  
But Felix stood, averting her eyes, rubbing mud off his hands. In a second, Jane was next to him, her tiny hand digging claw-like into his arm. He was a mountain of a man compared to her, but he did nothing to defend himself. Instead, he said: "Alec is gone. They dug him out and took him with them. I saw the traces and caught the scent when I got out, but I had to get you out first, and you would have ran after him right away if you knew, and I couldn't have gone with you and leave Co-"

  
Suddenly, he was on his knees as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. His head was thrown back, with his mouth open in mute agony. Jane's eyes were locked on him, her entire face contorted in fury, until Corin slammed into her, breaking her line of sight and her focus.

  
"Jane, please stop! It's useless!" she shouted as the small vampire tried in vain to break free from her hold. Corin knew that Jane could not harm a target she did not see, and so she kept her facing away from Felix and herself.

  
"How dare you, _how dare you_!?" shrieked Jane so sharply that Corin glanced around anxiously. Felix was still on his knees, looking shaken.

  
"We don't have time for this, Jane. We need to leave and look for Alec right now. Do you hear me, Jane? We need to go right now and we have a better chance of fighting those assholes off if there's three of us!"

  
Corin could almost feel the monumental effort it took Jane to get herself under control. She stopped struggling and ordered to be let go, her voice relatively calm. Knowing she had no other way out of the stalemate, Corin slowly let Jane go and tried not to flinch when her former captive turned around to face them. There was no retribution. The fury that had twisted Jane's features had been replaced with something completely new: a look of steel.

  
"Felix, tell me which way my brother's trace led."

 

* * *

 

The car came at a sudden halt, and Alec fell on his chest straight on one of the filthy mats which were covering the floor of the van he had been thrown into. He tried to get up, and his attempts at doing so were noticed by the Roma woman, who took him by the hair and threw his body back in an upright position.

  
"Thank you," he said with a grim smile.

  
The woman said nothing. Her eyes regarded him with a mixture between disinterest and distaste. It was with the same expression that she and her blond companion had pulled him out of the earth and... but no, he couldn't think about that. He had to think about something else.

  
"Why do you cover your face?" he asked her, moving his neck at different angles to get rid of a strand of hair that kept getting into his right eye.

  
No answer. She hadn't said a word since the entire operation began, and Alec wasn't sure if she could speak at all. Perhaps she didn't understand him, perhaps her jaw was too damaged, like Robespierre's on his final day. The disdainful way she looked at him advised silence, but Alec couldn't stay silent. He could never stay silent when he was afraid, and the only time he had been afraid and helpless like this was when he was tied to the stake. But this, this was beyond that horror.

  
His limbs were missing.

  
They had pulled him out and torn his limbs off before he had a chance to fight back or work his gift. His left arm was first, followed by his left and then by his legs. They had simply ripped them off in a manner that, upon reflection, proved to Alec that they had done it before. They had descended upon him like vultures, and within less than a minute, he was howling like an animal, rolling madly in the mud. He hadn't even noticed at first that the Roma woman had taken his limbs and ran away with them almost immediately.

  
Everything came into focus when the blond man had grabbed him by the neck and said: "My friends are watching. If you work your gift on me, they will burn your arms and legs. Don't make a move out of line, or we'll make you eat your own ashes."

  
For the first time in his vampire life, Alec had been too scared to think. His mind was a resonating blank. He did not even move when the man took him by the collar and used his belt to strap him to his back. Dazed, Alec looked around for signs of his sister and his companions, but the earth seemed undisturbed. That brought him a small measure of relief. He had seen Felix jump right before the wave hit, and hoped that he would be able to dig his way out to rescue Jane and Corin.

 

_Be well, Jane. Please._

  
He knew that if he did not find a way to leave a clue for them, he would most likely be lost. He still had his phone in his shirt pocket, but they were well out of the application's detection range. As he thought and thought, the forest cleared up and they emerged on the side of a road. Next to them was a freshly painted sign indicating only a short distance to the city. The blond man stopped and listened intently. After a while, frustrated, he took Alec down from his back and rifled through his pockets, and upon finding his phone, he crushed and rubbed it to bits in his hands. He threw the scraps into the bushes, where they were promptly swallowed up by the greenery. Ignoring Alec’s stony glare, he checked his own phone, and began looking up and down the road. After a few minutes, an old van with a local license plate came up to them. The blond man quickly slung Alec again on his back and turned towards the car. The old engine made a deafening noise as it choked its way uphill, and Alec took his only chance: he spat out the mouthful of venom he had been slowly gathering onto the sign. It landed with a splat and began corroding through the metal. His kidnapper did not seem to notice.

  
The Roma woman descended from the car and Alec suspected an unseen exchange between her and the man. He headed past her to the back of the van, and Alec could see how the wet silk of her scarf clung to her face, the vivid colors darkened by the rain, the oddly irregular line of her jaw visible. Alec was thrown into the back of the van, and the man warned him again of what would happen if he tried to work his gift on any of them. Alec threw him a withering look and briefly entertained a fantasy in which he was tearing little pieces out of the man’s face.

  
The woman climbed in after him and settled down into a corner, where she busied herself with loosening her long black hair and braiding it again. Once the car started, Alec took a minute to assess his situation. He didn’t feel hurt. After the initial shock and agony, he did not feel anything coming from the stumps where his arms and legs used to be, but the mere sight of them was maddening. He forced his eyes away from the cause of his distress and focused on the woman again. She had finished one braid, and now it hung, slick and heavy, on her shoulder. He could work his gift on her and chew her neck off, he mused, but then he would be at the mercy of her companion, who might make good on his promise and burn one of his arms. As long as they were still intact, he could reattach them with a bit of venom.

  
It was at that point in time that the car had come to a screeching halt, and he had fallen forward, only to be shoved back into place by the woman. He heard light footsteps outside and someone cautiously opened one of the doors. Alec's hardened expression turned into one of astonishment as he gazed upon a face he had last seen only a week before.

  
He would have pinched himself to make sure he was not hallucinating, if he had not recently been deprived of the necessary appendages and mobility, in one of life's little ironies that he had never quite learned to appreciate.

  
"You're supposed to be dead," he blurted.

  
"Aren't we all?" the newcomer smiled and climbed inside.

 

* * *

  
The phone had run out of battery. Felix cursed and resisted the urge to fling it against the nearest tree. They had lost the scent because of the rain, and it was time for them to make a decision. “We need to go back to the car,” he stated, steeling himself for another bolt of pain, but Jane offered only a frustrated sigh instead. Carefully, he continued: “I left a couple of cable and portable chargers there, and we could charge this phone and call back home to tell them what happened. Then they’ll send reinforcements and we will be a great deal safer and faster. I want to have Demetri here by tomorrow.”

  
Jane thought it over, and agreed. “Master needs to know. And we need a map.”

  
They had studied a map of the region on the way to Moscow, but not one that would be useful in the case of a kidnapping. In a rare moment of self-criticism, Jane chastised herself for counting so heavily on the hermit’s knowledge of the mountains. _Stupid, how could we have been so stupid! They could have taken Alec anywhere! A hole in the mountain, inside the city, away from this place altogether…_

  
As they descended the slopes, she tried again to sense him. She had often sensed him back in Volterra. When she entered a room, she knew if he was there or not before she took the first step over the threshold. Alec had simply always been there with her. And yet Jane asked herself, chest tightening painfully, if perhaps that wasn’t a mixture of expectation, habit and scent recognition rather than any sort of mystic or psychic bond.

  
The car was right where they had left it. Felix rummaged through the glove compartment until he found one of the portable chargers and connected his phone to it, praying that the rain had not damaged it beyond use. Meanwhile, it was Corin’s turn to come up with an idea.

  
“We look awful, all of us. We need to wash up and get new clothes if we want to go about unseen.”

  
A helicopter flew above them noisily. “They noticed the landslide,” murmured Jane.

  
It had drawn too much attention. Things were getting worse and worse.

  
“I remember a restaurant down the road, it might have guest rooms as well,” spoke Corin, shaking small lumps of earth from her hair. “We need a shower, and fresh clothing. While one of us takes care of that, we can call back home and get on the right track.”

  
There was an unanimous agreement, and everybody got in the car. Corin and Jane exchanged their hiking shoes with the ones they had traveled in, and took off jackets, hats and whatever dirty things they could go without. They combed their hair with their hands and used their soaked clothing to wipe their faces, necks and arms clean. Jane found Alec's travel jacket crumpled under one of the seats and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  
They drove down to the typical mountain hut restaurant, a welcome sight with white walls, dark wooden roof and bursts of red flowers hanging from every window. They scrambled out of the car with the air of an exhausted family, and made their way inside, keeping the act impeccably well. The old lady at the reception uttered a greeting and peered at them from underneath her plastic-rimmed spectacles. While they were booking two rooms, she advised them to keep off hiking in this part of the mountain, as it seems there had been a freak landslide yesterday. Felix pretended to be surprised. Once in their room, they gathered in a circle and called Aro’s direct number. It only rang once before Aro picked up.

  
“What happened? Is everyone alright?” he asked, his echoing voice a sign that he was in the Main Hall.

  
“I’m here, Master. Corin and Felix are with me,” Jane smiled, relishing the sound of his voice.

  
“Sweet one, what happened?”

  
She began to recount the events, speaking with careful words, letting her Master and coven know of the terrible events that transpired.

  
"They _took Alec_?" The tone of his voice alone, a mixture of shock and outrage, underlined the disaster at hand. Alec was one of the pillars of the Volturi rule, an essential cog that made everything run smoothly. And perhaps most importantly, he possessed precious knowledge of the intimate workings of the coven. He knew weaknesses, secret allies and locations and thousands of pieces of information that could place the Volturi government in very hot water, with experiments and assassinations being only the tip of the iceberg. Jane could hear murmurs at the other end of the line, could almost see the faces of her comrades as they looked at each other in disbelief.

  
"Dearest ones, our hearts and our arms are with you in this grave moment. You will remain where you are and wait for reinforcements. Demetri will arrive tomorrow with seven of our brightest. All our contacts in Russia will be called upon to aid us. We will find poor Alec and make an example of his captors." The last part was a bitter threat.

  
A flurry of noise exploded after Aro finished delivering his instructions. Jane could make out Maurel from Procurement, presumably on his own phone, snapping angrily to someone about booking a flight. The Volturi vault of resources was wide open, and the vampires were reaching out for everything that would get them through the crisis: technology, connections, money. It did not ease the awful feeling in Jane's heart, but it gave her something to do as she was asked hundreds of questions by her coven. She had to give their exact location, a description of what their attackers were wearing and other details that would help her allies in their search.

  
Corin had used some of this time to shower, and emerged from the bathroom looking refreshed. Felix went in to wash, leaving her to help Jane answer the questions. After a while, the deluge of inquiries trickled down to a few, and the three decided to take a break and find fresh clothes and food. Jane went in last to clean herself. The shower smelled of earth and rain, and the scent made Jane hold her breath. She would never enjoy the smell of the woods after rain ever again.

  
_We will get new clothes, find some animals to drink so that we do not arise suspicion and then we will go back to the mountain to look for Alec. I cannot wait here and do nothing_ , she thought as the curtain of hot water poured over her body. _What a terrible thing it is to love. It's like putting your heart in someone else's body. You die when they're not next to you._

 

* * *

  
Felix walked out on the balcony and stood next to Corin, looking at the sea of green pines spread out in the valley below them. The weather was beginning to clear up, soft clouds dissipating slowly to reveal a perfect blue sky. A flimsy yellow butterfly was hiding underneath the wooden railing, exhausted by the rain, its wings trembling feebly in the afternoon glow.

  
“Say… tell me something.”

  
“Yes?”

 

“When you were buried there… what did you think of? What went through your mind?”

  
Corin looked away, her eyes focused on something far, far in the distance. “I thought… that if I die, then nobody would have my mother’s eyes anymore. And it seemed to me the saddest thing in the world.”

  
“It would have been,” Felix said quietly, and for a while, the only sound around them was the whispering of the wind.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My gentle readers,
> 
> Thank you for being with me for so long, and Merry Christmas to you! I know I update with the frequency of a solar eclipse, but I am working on this story with all seriousness and dedication. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I love writing it. :)


	6. Chapter VI

**Chapter VI**

* * *

**In which Alec returns home**

* * *

 

"Jane, wait! Don't go!" shouted Felix from behind the first floor banister as the little vampire was marching down the stairs. They had just finished dressing themselves in the new clothes delivered to them by a shop in town when Jane pocketed her new cellphone and went down.

"I need to get a headstart!" she shouted back and slowed her rhythm, waiting for the telltale sound of her companions' footsteps. It was not fair, she knew, but it couldn't be helped. They were in no position to leave her wandering alone and unprotected, so they would need to follow her.

They caught up with her before she was even out the door, the discomfort caused by being trapped between orders obvious on their faces. It was hard to go against centuries of following Aro's orders, and Jane too was no exception - she had the distinct feeling that she shouldn't be doing it, but the urgency of her situation gnawed at her. She had to find her brother.

As they left the building, Felix and Corin flanking Jane anxiously, Jane was struck by the odd realization that with Alec gone, she had become twice as important to the Volturi, as if her brother's worth had transfered onto her. The thought made her nauseous, and she spat some venom flecked with dirt onto the pavement and watched it simmer as it melted a small hole in the ground.

"I've looked at the map and done the math," she spoke as they headed to the car. The sun had set, leaving a chip of bone-pale moon shining over the clear sky. "I don't think they took him somewhere on the mountain. They can't be that stupid, they would know we would comb every nook and cranny. And wherever they took him, they probably took him by car, as I can't imagine he would have followed them freely. I say we check the main roads for clues."

"You know what's been bothering me all this time?" asked Corin as she climbed into the car. "How could they get Alec at all? He should have cut off their senses within minutes. How could they kindnap someone with that kind of power?"

"They either have someone talented who can negate or overcome his powers, or they came up with something else," stated Felix, the unsaid implications of his words cutting into Jane like a knife.

They drove up to the place where they had last parked their car and got out. With their dark-colored sports clothes, they looked as if they had come off the cover of a sports magazine, with Jane the only odd one out, her brother's travel jacket hanging a bit awkwardly from her body. They decided to check the road nearest to the landslide area, as it made sense that time would have been of the essence for the kidnappers.

"They wanted to get out of there with Alec as soon as possible. I'd say it's a good place to start," Felix spoke as he peered into the dark depths of the forest. If he hadn't been worried about Alec, the prospect of pulling out all the stops and running as fast as his muscles would allow would have gotten him grinning with excitement. He would have even challenged Corin to a race, overtaken her easily and then dived at her unsuspecting head from atop a tree when she least expected. But the spectre of Alec's absence hung over them like an old cobweb, and there was room for nothing else in him but concentration.

They began their ascent. The encroaching darkness made the forest feel primaeval. Shafts of moonlight speared through the lattice of pine tree branches, briefly touching the three vampires as they ran up the side of the road with exhilarating speed, accompanied by the flutter of frightened owls and the dry crunch of green needles. Sometimes, they slowed down to feel the air and catch the scents of the night, or when one of them thought they saw a skid mark on the asphalt or a deep footprint in the mud by the side of the road. Although their eyes were as good as any nightcrawler's, Felix would have rather used flashlights, but they couldn't risk being spotted by anyone, human or vampire.

The moon was high above the stony peaks when Felix's cellphone started to vibrate. He hissed at his companions so sharply that Jane nearly slipped off the branch she was on. She balanced precariously for a few seconds, leaning back and forth like an acrobat in a silent film, before grabbing a branch to steady herself. Below, Corin was already next to Felix, the light of the phone screen casting a cold light over their fine features.

"What is it?" called Jane from above.

"I caught Alec's transmitter on the map!" announced Felix as both he and Corin darted forward and began searching through a patch of shrubs.

Jane's first instinct was to fly off her branch and join the search, but a thought held her in place. _His ashes could be in there._ And then she was paralyzed with terror at what she might discover in the next few seconds. So horrified she was that she wanted to tell the others to stop searching, but her voice seemed to have left her. It dawned upon her that she was not ready for anything except finding her brother alive.

There was a rustling in the grass below and she looked down to see a small hedgehog making his way across the mossy ground with pitter-pattering paws. She stared at it, unable to move, unable to speak.

Felix had turned on the pocket flashlight he had brought along and was knee-deep in the shrubbery together with Corin, combing through the stems and leaves. Corin made a noise and extended her closed palm towards him, which he promptly shone his light on.

"Cell phone pieces. Our model," Corin concluded. "They destroyed his cell phone for good measure."

"They probably took him here, got him in a car and destroyed his cell to avoid any tracking chances. Well I got news for these fuckers, Demetri is coming tomorrow and he will track their piss traces right up to their door," growled Felix, continuing his search.

"I don't see ashes anywhere," murmured Corin carefully, as if afraid to tempt fate. She heard Jane jump down from the tree and walk towards them.

"Found the transmitter!" cheered Felix, holding the vital little piece between his thumb and index fingers. He showed it to both ladies and then gave it to Jane to put in her pocket. She complied mechanically.

"They either took him here and got him into a car, or... they planted this here to lead us down the wrong path," mused Corin, twisting one shiny ringlet between her fingers.

"We just have to show this to Demetri and he will feel whether it's the right path or not. If yes, then we save considerable time." Felix focused his flashlight on the sign next to him, noting the distance to the city. "They probably took him to the city. It's too close not to take advantage of it." He moved his thumb to turn off the flashlight when Corin put a hand on his arm and stopped him.

"Felix, light that sign again please."

Felix did what was asked of him, and Corin went closer and examined a small hole at the bottom. "How odd," she muttered.

Felix came over and gave it a look as well. "What is it?"

"The sign here is new. It couldn't be more than six months old. The quality is also high enough to avoid rust. So what is this hole doing here?" Her fingers traced the edge of the hole carefully and peeled away at its yellowish margins. She rubbed the little bits between her fingers and sniffed at them. The light coming from the lantern made her eyes look like red enamel. "I've seen this before. It's venom. This is how our venom looks like after burning through metal."

Felix made a sound of recognition and promptly spat on the right side of the sign. It was not a mouthful, but his venom sizzled briefly before burning a few layers through the sheet of metal. It looked very much alike to the original work of art. One of the lesser-known proclivities of vampires, especially during their first century, was the habitual spitting on things to see the ensuing chemical reaction. The sizzling, melting and occasional sparks were a new way in which the neonate vampire could interact with the world. Spitting contests were frequent.

Jane surprised her companions by suddenly walking to the sign and using her finger to scrounge up the edges of the hole and collect the rusty remains in her palm, which she proceeded to smell, then lick. She held the contents in her mouth for a few seconds, and when her eyes widened, both Felix and Corin knew she had identified the trace as Alec's.

She spat a gob of rust-colored venom onto the ground and gasped: "It's Alec! He was here! He left this trace for us!"

"Excellent! That means they didn't kill him. I knew it, he's more worth to them living than dead." Corin exchanged a look of relief with Felix.

The little hedgehog reached Jane's leg, sniffed at it uncertainly and then continued on its way, followed by her red eyes. A soft mist was beginning to crawl down from the mountain, eating away at the edges of the world. The critter went on undeterred and vanished.

"Hedgehog in the fog," Jane said.

Corin gave her an inquiring look.

"It's a Soviet animated short film from the seventies... _Hedgehog in the Fog_. Alec loved it," explained Jane almost bashfully.

"Why don't we head back and you tell us what happens in it?"

Jane's story began together with their descent. "A little hedgehog lives in an old forest. Occasionally, he visits his friend the bear cub in the evenings. They drink tea, eat jam brought by the hedgehog and they admire the stars. One evening, the hedgehog travels through the forest to make his usual visit to his friend when he notices a meadow whose grass is covered by a blanket of fog. And in that meadow is a beautiful white horse, grazing what appears to be the fog itself. It looks like something out of a dream, of the kind that people don't have anymore.

Entranced by this ethereal apparition, the hedgehog enters the mist and gets lost in it. He wanders around the eerie and beautiful forest as shapes and animals drift in and out of sight. An owl stalks him, a fish saves him from drowning in a river. A rusty leaf startles him. In the end, he hears the voice of his worried friend calling out to him, and they are reunited. And then... "

_The bear cub talked and talked, and the hedgehog thought: "Isn't it wonderful that we are together again?"_

There was a little bit more to the story, but Jane, who had stopped, felt the air get caught in her throat and flailed her arms helplessly. Vampires could not cry, and so the pain had no way to go but down inside. Corin placed an arm around her and drew her close. "We'll get him back, you'll see. And then you'll watch the stars together again, half a sky for each of you."

 

* * *

 

It did not seem real, but there she was, right before him. She rummaged through the plump purse she was carrying and produced a blood bag. "Drink," she said, placing the tube of the bag close to his mouth. Alec leaned his head forward and caught the tip of the tube between his lips. His eyes never left the girl's face, even when the urgency of his thirst made him suck a little too fast for his dignity. He had been so scared for his life that his growing thirst had gone almost unnoticed. The blood was clean and young, and if Alec would have had arms he would have grabbed the soon empty bag out of the girl's hands, torn it open and licked it clean. The state of his body being less than satisfactory, he had to control himself when the girl slowly took the bag away from him and tucked it back in her purse. She had raindrops scattered on her thick black hair, which Alec had admired so many times before in the past.

"It's all I could get on such short notice," she said after he finished drinking. She had a hint of amusement on her face. "We weren't expecting you yet."

Alec did not know what to say. The situation was almost unreal. Silently, he stared at the wealth of red flowers embroidered on her black dress and at her necklace of delicate peridot drops. Even in a modern dress, it was still her. It was really her. The girl whose grave he had visited so often in the Volterra cemetery. The face he had come to know only in black and white was before him, in the most unexpected of ways, sweetened by the vampire transformation.

She moved forward, the gems on her neck glinting in the semidarkness of the van, and before Alec knew, she took him in her arms like an overgrown child. She carried him out of the van, and he could see that they were somewhere outside the city, a place judged by Alec to be a neighboring village. The colorful roofs of several houses were poking out of the sea of trees in the distance. They had stopped next to a faded wooden fence that surrounded an overgrown garden. Alec could hear bees buzzing around the greenery. A flock of sparrows was chirping loudly in the oak tree next to the rusty gate. A rotten swing was swaying lazily in the cool after-rain breeze. The girl pushed the gate open with her foot and began walking on a winding path lined with weeds and garden flowers. An occasional drop fell from the rustling canopy of branches above and curved down her round cheek. Alec looked at her until he felt her gaze about to shift to him, at which he looked down at her necklace.

"Do you like it? I made it myself."

"I used to have eyes that color once," said Alec, watching his disheveled reflection in the facets of the gems. "Listen, Oriana..."

The only reaction the girl had to hearing her name was a pair of slightly elevated eyebrows.

"And how might you know my name?" she asked while they were passing under a grapevine arch.

"You have a gravestone in Volterra cemetery. A picture, too. Your parents and younger brother express their love and regret."

"My, my, will the wonders never cease?" she asked no one in particular.

"I used to visit it quite often."

"How so?" She stopped to blow a ladybug away from Alec's forehead.

"It was a very nice picture."

The girl smiled, looking pleased.

"Where are you taking me, Oriana?"

"Surprise."

A small wooden house emerged at the end of the stone path, lined by two overgrown rose bushes. Its tiled roof was sinking slightly in the middle, and its windows had beautifully carved trims. Somebody had painted a red fox surrounded by bluebells on one of the outer walls. A clematis plant was spread out on the other wall and part of the roof, its deep purple flowers darkened by the recent rain. The front door was painted blue, with the house number scrawled on it in chalk. The house looked like it belonged in someone's happy childhood memories. If he wasn't being carried off to an unknown fate, Alec would have half expected a kind-faced grandmother to come out and greet him with a plate of freshly sliced apricots.

As soon as they got close to the house, the door did open. The middle aged man in running clothes gave them a steely look and stepped aside to let Oriana enter with her maimed hostage. They exchanged a look as she passed him, but Alec hardly noticed. He was suddenly consumed by an overwhelming feeling that something was wrong with the man. There was something deeply unsettling coming from him, but Alec did not know what, and the uncertainty made him more afraid. It was almost unheard of for a vampire not to know at all times what was happening to him and why. As Oriana walked on, Alec heard the man go outside and close the door behind him.

He was brought into a room filled with handmade rugs strewn across the floor. A faint musty smell hung in the air, the kind one often finds in old uninhabited houses. There were two vampires waiting around a table filled with maps. The first one to turn was the blond man who made half of the duo which attacked him and his companions. He seemed to be in a bad mood, and was standing with his arms firmly crossed against his chest. The other vampire was the lanky teenage boy with a head full of curls and a papery white skin. "We caught a big one," he said in a rather pleased tone of voice.

"Aren't you proud."

"Oh, I am. And why shouldn't I be? It's not every day that we have one of the most important vampires in the world at our mercy. Or at least part of him," the boy teased, eyeing Alec's torn sleeves.

"You know this will mean your death. Even if I die, the Volturi will hunt every last one of you down and drag you out from whatever crevice or hole you took shelter in and-"

"Feed us to the fire?" interrupted the boy.

"We are more _imaginative_ than that," replied Alec, looking mildly offended.

The boy seemed markedly unimpressed by the threat looming over his coven. He ran a slender hand through his mass of black curls and studied Alec with a knowing smile on his face. "Tell me something, old boy. If you were in my position, what would you do with your captive?"

"Tell him why he was taken in the first place."

"Why, there's every reason to! You know a lot. Mercury was in retrograde. The Volturi will never recover from the loss of your powers. You are very pretty."

He picked a stray hair off his striped t-shirt and put it on his tongue. Turning to the blond man, he said: "Call everyone, we need to make a decision. Remember to check if Asena's phone can still be used. And as for you," he approached Alec and placed a hand on his wet forehead. "You need to go away for a while."

 

* * *

 

Alec was quite sure he was dead. Or at least dreaming, because he was back home in his sister's room. His bare feet sank deliciously into the burgundy carpet. The room looked the same as usual, with Jane's desk in charming disarray and their self-made colorful stained glass lamp placed atop a pile of books, spreading a warm light on the paintings adorning the walls. Most of them were vampire work. Jane had painted their mother, a vivacious-looking woman gazing adoringly at him from her gilded frame. The only other painting in their collection which was a portrait belonged to a handsome young Frenchman known to history as Saint-Just. Alec had had the past two hundred and fifty years to get used to the painting, but he still had to suppress a scowl every time he saw it. They had been in France at the time of the French Revolution, enjoying the murderous chaos that made feeding such an easy task, and Jane, _sensible_ Jane, _reasonable_ Jane, had developed a most infuriating crush on this rather, in Alec's opinion, shady character. He never understood what was it that fueled this most improbable attraction, and Alec had suffered terribly during that time as he watched his sister essentially stalk the young man whenever the weather and time of day allowed it. It was humiliating beyond measure, and Alec privately lamented that no other Volturi member was willing to discreetly break the young revolutionary's neck for fear of Jane's wrath.

He remembered they somehow managed to sneak in the assembly when he was speaking once. _Death cannot be that busy_ , had thought Alec at the time, although quite unfairly, he later admitted to himself. Jane had been entranced by the speech and spent a lot of time making faces that made Alec wonder if vampires could still vomit involuntarily after all. She had even asked Aro to turn him, nodding her head during her speech almost as vigorously as Alec was shaking his at Aro behind her back. The man was too radical and too idealistic to be of use, and Aro elegantly slithered out of making any promises.

He was only twenty-seven when the guillotine finally cut his head off on a July day in 1794. The twins were outside Paris negotiating a trade with one of Aro's contacts and found out too late to do anything. Jane was devastated and sent Felix to buy his things when they were sold at a public auction the very next day. Felix came back with his sword and his ivory razor, which Jane kept in her room underneath her portrait of him. Alec had to bribe Felix not to buy Saint-Just's ivory flute as well, and he regarded the plate of Roman armor he traded as worth being spared an eternity of Jane playing that thing and sighing bitterly over it.

If Saint-Just had lived, he would have come to resemble his father more and more, with his large nose and stern countenance, and would have lost the pleasing softness bestowed by youth. Instead, he died a beautiful young man, and his portrait, painted with agonizing care by his smitten sister, was staring at him from across the room, all blue eyes and curls.

_God, how I hate you for dying young._

There was a small clanking sound as the paintings began to move as if something alive was wriggling underneath them. Suddenly, he took a step back as thick white worms started to pour out from beneath every painting on the wall, screeching at him in high little voices, and he saw the young man in the painting look straight at him and open an injured mouth. _The world has been empty since the Romans_ , he said as blood ran down his chin and into his immaculate cravat.

Alec opened his mouth to call for Jane, but his voice came out garbled and animal-like. There were no doors in the room, and he considered trying to break the walls, only to discourage himself with the strange omniscience of someone who is dreaming. As the room began to spin around him, the only clear thing he saw was Oriana, who was walking towards him carrying her self-made necklace in her lifeless hands. When she was only one step away, she began to grow and grow as if distorted by a sickening mirror... and then she took her tear-shaped gems and jammed them into Alec's eyes.

_Now you have your old eye color again._

Alec screamed.

 

* * *

 

The morning was sweet and warm, filled with the trills of sparrows and starlings. Demetri adjusted his cap and got out of the car, the little strips of skin he was showing glittering in the sun. His coven members piled out after him: Santiago, Meishan, Raj, Sofia, Abel and Yunan, all dressed in sports gear. They left the car on the side of the road and made their way through the forest until they reached a great fallen pine tree upon which their companions were waiting for them. Demetri grinned when he saw Felix's hulking form, and the two men were exchanging a powerful handshake within seconds. Watching them, Corin mused how complete Felix looked with Demetri by his side. After greeting his friend, Demetri turned to Jane. Silently, she placed the small transmitter in his outstretched palm, and watched Demetri's fist slowly close around it. Nobody dared make a sound. Jane held the tension of a crossbow between her childish shoulders. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Demetri opened his eyes.

"I already know where to go," he said. "He's still alive."

The rest of the coven exploded in cheers around them, with Corin jumping onto Felix' back and Meishan and Sofia each hugging one of Santiago's arms. Only Jane remained still, looking into Demetri's eyes.

"He is alive," she repeated. "And those who took him won't be for much longer."

Everybody around her smiled a sharp, hungry smile.


	7. Chapter VII

**Chapter VII**

* * *

  **In which there are several mysteries**

* * *

 

 

When the pain finally washed away, Alec was surrounded yet again by darkness. He tried to move, but found it impossible. This was getting at once old and on his nerves. For reasons he did not have time to question, he knew he was in the ground. He was buried alive, struck by the edge of the wave of earth hurled at them by their enemy. Felix had grabbed him in the last second and thrown him up towards the sky, hoping he would not be caught by the avalanche. It did strike him, when gravity inevitably pulled him down seconds later, and a tree trunk hit him in the head so hard that splinters of bark ended up in his mouth, and were now dissolving slowly in his venom. He knew he wasn't buried deep because he had had time to form an estimation based on the speed and volume of the wave. And yet he could not move. Not for the first time in his long, odd existence, Alec cursed his childish body. If he had had Felix's strength perhaps he could have risen out of the ground and smashed their assailants to pieces. But he had the body of a twelve year old boy from the Middle Ages, when the lack of proper nutrition and harsh living conditions meant that a child of his social standing was likely to grow up small of stature and rather delicate, in spite of his soldier father's supposedly fine physique. Alec had spent a thousand years wondering how he would have looked like if he had grown into a man, but his adult features remained as distant to him as the image of the father he never knew.

Alec tried to make sense of the madness he was in. He told himself not to be afraid, because the others were out there and... the _others_ were out there. The realization, however late it was, would have stopped his heart if it had been still beating. Their attackers would be free to dig them up and slaughter them one by one. Felix would be hard to kill, but who knows how many enemies were really out there? Corin was a skilled fighter, for she had witnessed battlefield bloodshed for millennia, an innocuous camp follower who would feed on the dying in the heat of battle... but her fighting was more art than war, and she would struggle against several opponents. As for himself and Jane... they worked well within the protection of their guard, but had never faced a dangerous foe on their own. Felix's throw and the wave had caught him too off guard to look for Jane as he shot up in the air and subsequently crashed down into the landslide, and he realized with a debilitating, shattering pain that he might have lost his chance to see her one last time.

 _This can't end like this_ , he thought, rather naively for someone who had seen _this_ happen to others time and time again throughout his long life. He had thought of death after he had been turned into a vampire, but it had always been an abstract idea, made more and more translucid by the passing centuries. The very real possibility of a mishap, a powerful foe, of sheer bad luck paled unreasonably in the face of the increasing Volturi omnipotence. There was nobody who could harm them, the perfect twins, tucked safely into the Volturi altar of power. At yet here he was, six feet in the ground, where the villagers had wanted him that horrible day. _It took a while, but here I am_ , he thought bitterly.

He made another attempt to move and tried shifting his arms, only to reach the shocking conclusion that he could feel his extremities.

" _Open your eyes_ ," a mellow voice whispered in the foggy halls of his mind. The words echoed gravely, and somehow Alec did not resent the strange presence. _I'm dreaming_ , he thought. _This already happened. They dug me out. And if this is a dream… then it means that I can leave it._

And then he felt the weight on his frame being lifted and he rose out of the earth into a sky full of stars. He found himself in front of a large, barn-like building. A sweet smell was hanging in the air, but his senses were dulled and he couldn't identify it, nor its source. He could hear a dog barking angrily in the distance. The door of the barn opened and a figure came out. He couldn't make out who it was, and the absence of his vampire senses made him wonder if perhaps he was dreaming of being human again. He followed the figure around the corner. It was a woman with long hair tied in braids and a full skirt with frayed, dirty edges. She left bare footprints in the damp ground. Alec followed her silently, floating after her in that implicit knowledge dreams can sometimes give one. He knew he was invisible to her.

Judging by the hideous stench wafting through the air, the rundown row of shacks the woman was heading to were the latrines. A flash of light hit Alec's eyes, and he saw a scouting beam coming out from a tower. The woman broke into a run and reached the latrines, leaving Alec alone. “Where am I?” he asked aloud, but no sound came out of his mouth. A plume of smoke was stretching out on the inky sky, coming from somewhere nearby. There was something peculiar about the setting, Alec thought. The world had washed-out, hazy contours, and the buildings kept changing their locations and colors ever so slightly when he was looking away. It was as if he was trapped in an unfinished illustration. Before he could have time to take a better look at his environment, the woman came out, wrapping the rag she was using as a shawl tightly around her. She began making her way back, throwing anxious looks at the guard tower, and Alec prepared to join her when they both heard a distinctly human whimper. The woman hesitated, listening in the darkness. The whimpering continued, and she headed cautiously in its direction. Alec followed like a shadow, intrigued.

She peeked around the corner of one of the buildings, then edged carefully along the wall towards the entrance. A dark shape was bent over the naked, marble white body of a teenage girl, her limbs twitching painfully in the moonlight shining through the open door. Staring at the gruesome spectacle from behind the young woman, Alec recognized the black shape as a huge, well-built man in dark clothing. He had his mouth clamped over the girl’s bruised neck and one large hand covering her right breast. The woman next to Alec stared, uncomprehending.

 _A vampire_ , Alec thought. _He’s feeding on these…_ and then, the sudden realization hit him with disturbing clarity. _This is a concentration camp. He’s feeding on the prisoners._

Alec had barely finished his thought when the woman next to him was pulled inside so brutally that she did not even have time to scream. The man held her struggling arms shackled in his hands. Blood was pouring down from his mouth, the tell-tale sign of a vampire who had fed far beyond the natural need and was full to his throat. He swung the woman around and smacked her hard across the face. Alec heard a sickening crack before he saw the woman being slammed into a pile of ghastly gray bodies rotting in a corner. She let out a high-pitched, terrified scream and the fiend was upon her, ripping up her rags to get to her throat. She screamed and wailed as he bit her, hopelessly clawing at his clothes. Alec crossed over to them, passing the feebly moving body of the teenage girl, and looked in revulsion at the scene unfolding before him. The woman’s face was a red ruin, and the vampire had barely drawn a few gulps when the blood started coming down his nose in small rivulets. “Fucking gorger, just kill her already,” Alec spat, but no sound came out of his mouth. Then, just as the woman’s eyes rolled to the back of her head, the sound of footsteps echoed through the night and several guards burst through the door, shouting in German. The vampire dropped his victim and lunged at them, taking the head of a weasel-faced guard with one swing. Almost all the humans went down as if they were made of wet tissues, with the exception of one, who miraculously managed to sprint out of the building and began howling for his comrades. Seconds after, the piercing sound of an alarm rang throughout the camp, and the searchlights began moving madly across its surface. The vampire weighed his options for a second, and took a step towards the exit when he heard his teenage victim give a gurgle. He turned towards her and, with a swift, precise motion, crushed her throat with his boot. He advanced toward the broken body of the woman with what Alec believed were the same intentions, but then the approaching sound of dozens of guards seemed to have changed his mind. He jumped up to the rafters and smashed a hole through the roof, through which he climbed out with surprising nimbleness. Alec was left alone with the wounded, unstirring woman. As the blurred shapes of the guards began streaming around him and the world began to dissolve at the seams, the only thing which maintained its clarity was the shape of the remaining victim, barely clinging to life. Then there was nothing but darkness again.

 

* * *

 

“The _whole mountainside_?” Santiago repeated, staring at Corin.

“It just went up like a wave and smashed into us. I’ve never seen anything like that in my whole existence,” she answered.

They were piled up in the back of a van driven by Felix, with maps crumpled between their hands. The newcomers had been told about the events which transpired, but still held a measure of disbelief at hearing something so astonishing.

“How come we’ve never heard anything about these people until now? Are they newborns?”

“Judging from Aro’s drawings, the man is quite young and the woman is not more than a hundred, but it’s difficult to say for sure because she covers her face. I think she has a deformity not even the change could fix.”

“So how will we fight against someone who can flip the scenery over our heads?” asked Meishan, a small vampire with sharp features and three missing fingers.

“We need to spread out so that they can’t target all of us at once. They only got us because we weren’t paying attention,” called Felix from the driver’s seat.

“What happened to the monk?” inquired Abel, a long faced vampire with white eyelashes.  

“I think he’s still buried. We need to send someone to find him. The last thing we want is the humans to dig him up all starved and cause a scene,” came Felix’s reply. Corin nodded. Jane said nothing, her eyes on the map on her mobile phone. Just as she was following the blue dot of their vehicle across the winding road, the golden Volturi crest stretched over the display.

“Yes, Master?” she answered immediately. The person at the end of the line said nothing, which made her wonder if perhaps there was not a connection problem. All ears were focused on the static noises coming from the small mobile phone.

“Dear ones… there has been a change of plans,” came Aro’s voice finally, tinged with a certain hesitance which everyone found unsettling. Aro was never openly hesitant.

“We are all listening,” said Jane after a brief pause.

“It is my turn to give you distressing news. Our beloved Athenodora is missing. She disappeared from the tower and we cannot find her anywhere in Volterra. We’ve combed the city, looked over the security footage but we cannot see where she went. There is no scent, no trace of her. It’s as if she simply disappeared.”

As the occupants of the van exchanged stunned looks, Aro continued. “As you can very well imagine, Caius is distraught with worry. We need Demetri to come back immediately and help the search efforts.”

 _But we need Demetri to find Alec_ , thought Jane, paralyzed. _He can’t leave now._

She somehow found the strength to say this aloud, under the conflicted gaze of her comrades.

Aro answered in the gentlest of tones, saying “Dearest one, it pains me to do this, but consider what could happen if Athenodora should die. Caius will become like Marcus – his fire, the source behind the Volturi energy for centuries, will be irrevocably extinguished. You know that once a vampire finds his soulmate, death of one means death of both. We cannot risk to lose Caius. We would take a great blow should this happen, with unprecedented consequences. Therefore, we must find Athenodora before something terrible happens to her. This is why I am hereby telling Demetri to come back at once.”

 _But what about me? Can I risk to lose Alec? Would I be any less a ruin without him than Caius without his wife?_ was Jane’s thought, but she did not voice it this time. She had always known that hierarchically, Caius was above her, and his need trumped hers. But she still couldn’t help feeling the sting of a betrayal. She and her twin had never been passed over in favor of someone else, and the critical moment and high stakes made her feel as if a great injustice was being done to her. _I have to fight for Alec_.

“Master, please give us more time,” begged Jane. “We are very close to finding Alec, Alec who is still alive and can still be rescued. I only ask for one day. We have served faithfully for more than a thousand years. I just need _one day_.”

There was silence at the end of the line, followed by a long, airy sigh. Something was stretched out like a violin chord inside Jane.

“Jane, my dearest one… I have always thought that finding you and your brother was one of the greatest things that happened not only to me, but to us all. You are our golden children and we will protect you as long as we stand in this world. I had to change you at a young age, and it was unfortunate – I regret the circumstances to this day. To take the edge off this great injustice done to you and your brother by the cowardly and murderous humans around you, I pledged the Volturi protection. But for us to offer you the protection and life you deserve, we need to be strong… and we cannot be as strong without Caius. This is why it is of paramount importance that Demetri comes back immediately. I have absolute faith in the ones who are with you right now. They will bring Alec back, I am certain of it. Will you not, dear ones?”

The vampires nodded in unison and uttered words of confirmation, but their usual confidence was absent from their voices. Somewhere in the back of Jane’s mind, a voice was screaming. The next thing she knew, the car was slowing down and Demetri was standing in front of her, eyes closed, brow furrowed. She recognized the look of intense concentration on his face and felt a pang of gratitude. He was making one last reach for Alec’s whereabouts, his mind searching the ether, tugging on the silver string which bound him to someone he knew so well. After a few minutes of silence, he opened his eyes and went down on one knee in front of Jane. “He is about fifty kilometers east. I keep seeing something… something blue.” He watched Jane nod, and was struck by how young and scared she looked. There was nothing haughty or cold in her now, just trembling fear, and Demetri recognized that it was her life too on the line, not just Alec’s. He felt the need to comfort this girl, who suddenly became as young as she looked, but all he could offer was: “I will keep Alec’s tracker with me. If we find Athenodora fast, I will start looking for him again, I promise.”

“Thank you, Demetri. I will not forget this,” whispered Jane.

Demetri hopped out of the car, followed by Yunan, according to the Volturi custom of avoiding traveling alone. He went over to the other side of the car and shook Felix’s hand, wishing him good luck before disappearing into the cool green forest. Uneasy and having lost two from their ranks, the Volturi exchanged a few looks before Felix started the car again. They all felt it wasn’t right – they had all known members which were lost, which had to be left behind, even a few which had to be sacrificed. The vampire world was one long, drawn-out war and all of them considered the protection offered by the Volturi to be a powerful incentive. But Aro’s decision seemed to be an overreaction. All Jane had asked for was one day. One day to find one of the most powerful members of their coven. This left them with a heavy sense of uneasiness which draped over them as they drove closer to their unclear destination. They were not speaking, uncertain about what to say. Assurances were empty for beings who had lived so long and seen almost everything happen. Unfounded optimism had long fallen before the axe of experience.

Jane was looking down at the map in front of her, trying to find any cities or villages fifty kilometers to the east. There were several possibilities, and her companions were debating where to start. The sun was slowly setting down behind the mountains, turning the skies petal-pink and basking the forest in a gentle golden glow. It reminded Felix of an ornamental comb glittering in the hair of an emperor’s favorite he had once known. There was rarely a moment of beauty before his eyes which did not remind him of some sweet face and shimmering silks, and for the time being, he was content to leave the flow of strategizing to the others, intervening only when he completely disagreed with something. Corin had found her voice back and was talking almost continuously, grinding one of her ringlets between her alabaster fingers. Santiago was sitting with his massive arms crossed, nodding at everything she said. Meishan and Sofia, a frosty-looking blonde whose exterior belied her character, were watching the others warily. They had contacted their nearby allies and asked them to go and dig out the buried monk, lest the humans discovered him first. Abel and Raj were exchanging quips about who will have the highest kill count at the end of the day. There was a long night ahead of them, and they all welcomed the setting sun, which would free them to wander across forests and roads, villages and fields without the need for subterfuge.

Corin finally stopped talking, and was gazing over Felix’s shoulder at the sunset, feeling a tinge of nostalgia, the same kind she felt at the end of every day. Normally, she never felt it for more than a few minutes, because the night would bring skies full of stars and aurora curtains, and the promise of freedom. But this time, she felt it linger – was it because she felt that her world was about to change? She couldn’t tell. They might very well find Alec and destroy their strange enemy. But she had the feeling that something was shifting, that the pieces were moving on the board again. She would have even felt excited if it wasn’t for the fact that she was quite fond of Alec. The idea that he was in danger or even dead pained her, and she didn’t really know if it was because she liked him that much or because he, having the appearance of a boy, stirred some maternal instinct in her, which hadn’t had life breathed into since the last time she saw her siblings. Even with them dead, she had cared for her line across centuries, but they eventually died out, leaving her the last crystallized leaf on her ancient family tree. 

 _Be safe, Alec_ , she urged him. _Only you can remember the world as it was when you were there to see it. That piece of world lives in you and it will perish with you. Put up a fight!_

 

* * *

 

 

The van smelled of mildew and dirt, and Alec knew it was an old model even before he opened his eyes. He made a quick body check and was relieved to see that he wasn’t missing any further body parts. Oriana was sitting next to him, a small crocheted bag besides her. Her beautiful hair spilled over her shoulders.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked without looking up from a piece of cloth she was embroidering.

“Ugh,” articulated Alec elegantly.

“His gift should be very similar to yours, isn’t that right?”

“I don’t make people dream,” he responded, eyeing his surroundings suspiciously.

“You _dreamed_?” she inquired, eyebrows raised.

“Of you,” Alec lied without missing a beat, intrigued by her reaction.

 _So it’s either not normal or very unusual to dream while under the power of his gift_ , made Alec a mental note. He still wasn’t sure whether he was still in a dream or not, and fixed Oriana with an intense stare, waiting for something unsettling to happen. Instead, he was rewarded with a mild frown and a “Do I have something in my teeth?” So he focused his attention at the sounds outside the van. He could hear the engine of another, newer car in front of the van, and he presumed that it belonged to his captors. Aside that, he could hear no other cars or sounds associated with a city, so he assumed they were on a road to somewhere. The dusty windows of the van door showed only a patch of sunset sky. _They’re relocating me_ , he thought, and hoped that they were doing it because they were being followed by his coven. He hoped that Jane, Corin and Felix had made it out alright and would find him soon. In the meantime, he wisely focused on finding a means of escape. He looked up and saw that someone had punched a fist-sized hole in the wall which separated the van from the driver’s cabin, probably to serve as a crude peephole. He couldn’t hear anything which clued him on the identity of the driver, so he closed his eyes and let his fine nose take in the scents surrounding him. The musty smell of the van gradually gave way to Oriana’s, and he found that she smelled like a garden after a storm. There was something about that fragrance which took him back to barefoot moments in old woods. But that wasn’t what he was after, so he continued to analyze, to reach out for the third presence in the car. He caught the subtle smell of the third driver – in particular, he could smell the expensive fabrics and hear the ticking of a watch. That watch is ticking for me, he thought. _It’s counting the seconds until my execution. How long before they realize there is no way out for them and all they can do is take me out to deal a blow to the Volturi?_ He had to do something. 

“How long have you been doing that? It’s very good work.”

He was not quite right – the work was absolutely exquisite, the kind achieved only by expert hands and fine senses. He saw several spools of colored thread peeking out from the crocheted bag laying at her side.

“A while. Idle hands and all that.”

“My sister is the same. She has a whole range of things to keep herself busy.”

“She is known to be a very busy girl. What about you?”

The implication was not lost on Alec, but he and Jane were used to being the scarecrow twins. “When I’m not keeping law and order, I like to read poetry.”

“ _Keeping law and order_ ,” repeated Oriana slowly. “That’s a nice way to call it. Doesn’t sound at all tyrannical. Good job.”

“If we are to argue over semantics, I need to warn you – I have written and published several dictionaries. I will be swift and merciless, not to mention _insufferable_ in my adroit delivery of arguments.”

“You’ve written _dictionaries_.”

“I have a lot of free time.”

Before Alec had the time to say anything further, he received a question. “Does it hurt?” she asked with a studied air of casualness.

“Not at all. It just feels odd to lose all four limbs. Can’t say I recommend it.”   

“Didn’t think so,” she agreed.

Alec couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound deeply resentful, and a few minutes of silence passed between them, broken only when Oriana uttered: “So. You found my grave.”

“I did. I like the photograph your family used. It was different.”

“Oh?”

“Your hair was unbound and covering your shoulders. Not a typical portrait.”

“Ah yes, I remember when I had that taken. My father loved my hair so he let me be photographed like that. It was his favorite portrait of me.”

“How did you end up a vampire?”

“I died.”

“Well we all did, it’s somewhat of a prerequisite. The heart stops during the transformation. But who changed you?”

“A dashing young man called Lestat. Terribly handsome fellow. I assume he needs no introduction.”

“Very funny,” Alec made a face and blew a strand of hair away from his eyes.

Something landed on the top of the van with a loud thud. Oriana got up immediately and went to the doors. Alec heard light footsteps and when Oriana opened the doors, he saw the lanky boy jump in.

“Hello sweet prince,” he greeted cheerfully. Alec stared at him in a manner which he hoped was hostile and terrifying. “Did you sleep well?” Completely unfazed by Alec’s attempt to hurt him with his eyes, the boy kneeled in front of him and took out a cell phone from his pocket.

“I’m going to need a favor from you.”

 


	8. Chapter VIII

**Chapter VIII**

* * *

 

**In which Alec makes a splash**

* * *

 

 

There was an odd sort of commotion in the streets of Volterra as the sun set further and further behind the hills. Once in a while, an ashen-skinned man or woman would come out of a narrow alleyway or descend from a wall. Old Mr. Calorenno nearly had a heart attack when he tried to get a bucket of water from the public well close to his house and thought he saw the head of a woman at the bottom. On the other side of the city, the owner of a pizzeria discovered that the key to his office upstairs was missing.

The local children reported seeing several black cars leaving the city in various directions and one swore he saw someone climb the Buonparenti tower. Cell phones were ringing or vibrating throughout the busy streets. In the L’Incontro bar, a fresh-faced beauty was showing the admiring patrons a photograph of her equally alluring friend and asking whether anyone had seen her lately. But nobody had. Chelsea sighed and gently slapped away yet another hand heading towards her behind. Leaving her untouched drink on the counter, she made her way outside and saw Sybil from Accounting, wet to the skin, making her way to the city center. Chelsea caught up with her. “I’ve looked in every well in the damn city,” Sybil said after she coughed out some water from her throat. “She’s not here.”

“Nobody saw her in any of the bars. Where could she be?”

“The way I see it,” answered Sybil while squeezing her thick wet ponytail, there are only two options: either she’s dead and we’ll never find her ashes or she left. She’s lived here for centuries, she knows every nook and cranny, every secret door, every blind spot the security cameras in this city have.”

“This just _can’t be_. Syb, think about it. Marcus would have seen a weakening in her bond with Caius. Because why else would she leave?”

Chelsea had been with the Volturi since the beginning, and the millennia she survived at their side firmly cemented the belief that being part of them was the most fortunate position a vampire could hope for – even more so when being a core member. She had never, not for an instant, considered leaving and so she could not comprehend why a wife would leave the arms of a loving husband and the protection and respect of the most powerful coven in existence. So what _had_ happened to Athenodora?   

“Perhaps she killed herself,” whispered Sybil.

That in itself was not unheard of. Many vampires lost their purpose in life and sanity with the passing of time, and saw no way out from the farce they were trapped in. Chelsea knew of a vampire who, after three centuries of adventures and travels, had built up a roaring bonfire one fine evening and jumped into it in front of his screaming mate. _There’s absolutely nothing left to do_ , he had said matter-of-factly.

Vampires were always full of surprises. One time, when she was still calling herself Catherine, she found and turned a young man who could predict the future. His was a rare gift, and the Volturi rejoiced when they found out whom she had discovered in a modest English manor. The rejoicing was cut rather short when Bartholomew, who had been unusually particular about cleanliness in life, began exhibiting symptoms of great distress and agitation once he began to see the world in greater detail due to his newly enhanced senses. He became painfully aware of every speck of dust and detritus landing on him and complained with increasing hysteria about how disgusting the world had become, until it all culminated when they were crossing a forest on their way to Volterra and he broke down screaming about the millions of things he could hear crawling all around him. Chelsea tried her best to comfort him but the moment she placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, he lunged at her, screaming that she had ruined him. When it was all over and Chelsea was furiously rubbing two twigs together next to his pile of limbs, she concluded, not for the first time, that not everybody was cut out to become a vampire. For every constant bond, for every faithfully followed purpose and unchanging character, there was something waiting in the wings to spring out a day or a millennia after the change.

They were getting very close to the city center when a figure emerged from an alleyway and joined them – Afton, Chelsea’s husband, was looking inconspicuous in jeans and a checkered shirt. She greeted him with a smile and asked for any news. “They are interrogating poor Sulpicia again. She’s being very patient from what I heard but she can’t tell Aro anything she hasn’t said the first time. Athenodora went up to the tower and never came back. Sulpicia didn’t pay much attention because it was normal for them to go up for air once in a while. They didn’t realize she was gone until dinnertime. Aro’s been going through her memories for an hour now. Why are you wet, Sybil?”

“Well duty,” she responded, a little annoyed.

“Count your lucky stars. Heidi drew sewer duty. I think it’s the first time in her life when she walked outside and no man wanted to hit on her.”

Sybil gave a dry chuckle and Chelsea playfully elbowed her mate. Heidi was notoriously proud of her proverbial good looks and had that unmistakable confidence of the beautiful elite, which occasionally spilled over into arrogance. In spite of that, she was well loved for her centuries of dutifully bringing home food, although it did not exempt her from the occasional tease and jest.

“When is Demetri coming back?” asked Chelsea as she checked her phone for any updates. The group chat they had created for the emergency showed a very disappointing stream of “nothing here” messages in one form or another.

“He’s expected tomorrow. It’s a bit strange…” Afton paused. He waited for the inquiring looks of his wife and Sybil, and continued: “We all thought that we wouldn’t need him here – he could have started tracking her as soon as he was told so. But this time, it seems to be different. Word around is that he’s having some kind of trouble and he hopes that by coming here directly he’ll be able to track her.”

“This never happened before. Unless she’s…”

“Demetri says she’s not dead.”

Chelsea frowned. They mystery was deepening. In the worst case scenario, if Athenodora was somehow dead, she could still bind Caius to the Volturi. But with the situation still unclear, and the bond between husband and wife untouched, she could do nothing. Until Demetri returned, all they could do is keep looking.

 

* * *

 

Alec turned his face away from the cell phone, a bitter smile on his lips. “I’m certain I don’t owe you any favors.”

“Oh but I think you _do_. We are, after all, safekeeping your arms and legs. So be a good boy and-“

Alec saw fit to interrupt him. “How do I even know if you haven’t burned them already? I have no guarantee they’re not ashes.”

To his surprise, the boy considered his words for a moment and then said: “Fair enough,” after which he dialed a number. A male voice answered and the boy simply said “I need to see your half of the little prince.”

Alec heard footsteps coming from the phone’s speakers, then a creaking sound. The boy showed him the screen, and Alec was relieved to recognize his thin, bare limbs nestled in a blanket inside a wooden box. It was strange to see his arms, every inch of them so familiar, lying there unmoving like props, exceedingly pale under the flashlight beam shone on them by the boy’s unknown comrade.

“Now that we have settled that matter, I need you to say a few words for me.”

Alec was silent for a while. “I assume you want me to tell my coven to stop the pursuit.”

“We’re terribly predictable that way,” the boy gave a laugh.

Alec wondered if he could spit venom directly into his eye, but thought better of it. His aim had never been as good as Jane’s.

“Repeat after me. Stop following me or I will grow even shorter, one limb at a time.”

Alec bit down a few choice words and shook his hair out of his eyes. “It’s so cliché. Could it be that this is your first kidnapping?”

The blow was so fast he didn’t even see it coming. In a split second, he was laying on his side, pain registering in every cell. He groaned, uselessly trying to bring phantom hands to his face. In front of him, Oriana was looking pointedly away. A hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back into an upright position. The boy faced him with a smile. Alec glanced down and saw that his phone was ready for recording. “Let’s try again.”

There was something indefinable in the boy’s face, Alex decided, something quite foreign to himself. It took him a few seconds to process the feeling, only to have it dawn on him that he had seen glimpses of that inscrutable expression on Aro and the oldest members of the Volturi. It felt less like looking at a person and more like looking into the face of a Sphinx. His eyes locked on the boy’s, Alec slowly repeated his words. His captor’s smile widened and he gave Alec an affectionate, if dog-like pat on the head. He swiped for a bit on his phone and remained focused on the screen for a while. Alec sighed.

“It’s a pity, you know.”

The boy did not take his eyes from the cell phone screen. “What is?” he asked amiably.

“I liked my arms and legs. I really did. It was nice having them.”

The boy looked up. The phone slid from his hand as his face went blank and he collapsed over Oriana, who was already lying prone in her place, venom dripping from her mouth and burning small holes in her dress. Alec closed his eyes and willed his mist forward. Whoever was in the driver’s seat had ceased to control the vehicle seconds before. He reached out in his mind and felt the surroundings, looking for sparks of consciousness. He found what he thought were several people, but they kept going just out of his reach. They must have been in another car, and would notice the tell-tale signs of his actions in a matter of minutes. He had to act fast. Rolling over the boy’s body, Alec reached his cell phone and activated the screen with his nose. It was too late; it had already automatically locked itself. He thought for a moment, then pressed his nose against the emergency button. He would call the emergency services, give them a Volturi phone number and his coven would know his location. The screen froze for a few seconds, the call not going out. The emergency function had been disabled, Alec realized. He slammed his forehead against the dirty floor and let out a long growl. He then placed his face close to the phone, used his tongue to lift it up and get it between his teeth and crunched once, _hard_. The device died instantly.

He then rolled over to the body of the boy and positioned himself close to his hand _. I’m going to enjoy this_ , he thought savagely as he took the boy's thumb between his teeth. It came off with a loud, satisfying snap. “Wish I had time for the head,” he sighed out loud after the thumb was safely stored in his stomach. He had never ingested vampire parts before, but he believed that they would most likely not melt. The thumb made a poor hostage, but he didn’t have time for more. He rolled over to the door and managed to throw himself up like a fish several times until he could grab the door handle with his teeth. The door swung open and the sharp noise of a raging river invaded his ears. The car was keeping unsteadily on the road, but Alec knew it was only a matter of time until it crashed. He took one deep breath, savoring the scent of greenery and cold water, his eyes closed, his concentration still keeping his enemies captive. He had already sent his message. If he was to be a cripple, then his sister would have him want for nothing. His soul would be whole with Jane, _home_ , and that was more important than being whole in body. Alec opened his eyes, the boy’s thumb uncomfortable in his stomach, and threw himself out of the car. As the van swerved erratically behind him, he rolled into the rapid waters of the river, smiling as angry shouts echoed from the distance. In an instant, he was swallowed and carried away.

 

* * *

 

In an age of cell phones, Volterra had only a few payphones left for its tourists. One such phone, an old contraption, gray and ugly and overly polished with age, was in the Alberto Etrurio hotel on Via Giacomo Matteoti. Mrs. Urgnani, the elderly owner, was so startled to hear it ring that her glasses nearly fell from her nose. She got up slowly, minding her aching joints, and was heading for it when a sickly-looking man in a checkered shirt burst in and lunged at the ringing phone, startling her even more. He listened intently to what the caller was saying but did not say anything in reply. He was a fine man, but he must have been a foreigner from a cold country, Mrs. Urgnani concluded, because no local would ever have such a dire need of a few hours in the sun. The man put the phone back and seemed to see her for the first time. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Urgnani, I was expecting that call,” he apologized in a perfect local accent. Mrs. Urgnani was thoroughly confused. “Have we met, dear?” she wanted to ask, but he was out the door before she could finish the sentence. She could see him through the glass doors of the hotel, talking animatedly to two beauties. As they all left in a great hurry, she concluded that her memory was not as sharp as it used to be.

 

* * *

 

“The pitch, Afton, I need you to mimic the _pitch_ ,” repeated Jane.   

The recording Afton had listened to and correctly identified as such was certainly scripted. This meant that her brother could not have used their carefully designed code system to communicate his whereabouts. Since situations requiring some shared secret channel of communication were not entirely unforeseeable, the twins had created and perfected a code which could be read by interpreting the subtle differences in the pitch of each other’s voices. They normally used their system to mock the unfortunate fashion choices of their coven members during long meetings or to signal when they thought someone was lying. Now it would be put to real use.     

Afton dutifully repeated the words he had heard in the recording, carefully reconstructing the pitch of Alec’s voice from memory. Jane listened intently, following the sounds as they registered within her mind, lining up the letters they conjured. And when it was all done, she let out a gasp and covered her mouth with her hand. Felix, Corin and the others were around her, their faces tensed, waiting for the worst.

“Dear one, what did Alec say?” came Aro’s voice on the line, steady but expectant.

“ _Limbs cut. In van_. They… they cut off his limbs. _They cut off my brother’s limbs_.”  

Corin winced. Aro was quiet for a moment, then exclaimed: “So _that’s_ how they kept him from using his gift. They blackmailed him with his own body parts.”

“Clever,” said Santiago without thinking, but luckily for him, Jane wasn’t paying attention. She was standing rooted on the spot, her face awash in paralyzing disbelief.

Felix was the first to recover. “He said he was in a van. This means they’re on the move, and they are probably on a street going east, as Demetri told us. That narrows our search down well enough. Let’s not waste any time, we need to go now.”

His order was obeyed by everyone, with Jane following mechanically. As they all got back to their vehicle, Aro bid them goodbye and good luck and hung up, returning to his home crisis. Maps were examined once again, and the van sped along the winding roads.

“Do you think we should follow the main road or should we split up and cover the side roads as well?” Corin asked Felix as her eyes followed the black lines of the roads on her map. When he didn’t answer, she raised her eyes towards him, and called his name again. “ _Felix_?”

“They got to him first,” growled Felix, clutching the wheel. They got to him first and it’s my fault.”   

“How can it be your fault? We were all hit by the wave!” protested Corin. “What could you have possibly done to cause Alec’s kidnapping?”

“It was a miscalculation on my part. I couldn’t have known but still… I threw Alec into the air when I saw the landslide about to hit us. I was hoping that he wouldn’t be buried so deep and could somehow dig himself out. He was the only one who could have subdued all our enemies at once. Instead, I made sure he was the first of us they could reach.”

“Felix…” Corin placed a hand on his arm. “You couldn’t have possibly known that this would happen. This could have ended much worse.”

Felix didn’t have any answer. On a purely rational level, he knew that Corin was right, of course. It had been an extraordinary situation and yes, it could have ended worse than it did. But that did not change the fact that his split-second decision had been a contributing factor to the mess. He had to fix it before it crossed the point of no return. Throwing an eye over Corin's map, he told Meishan and Sofia "Ladies, take the adjoining roads and meet us here," and pointed to the dot of a tiny village on the main road. The two gave curt nods and asked Corin to check if there were any humans nearby, after which they opened the doors of the van and jumped out. Santiago closed the doors and went back to sit opposite of Jane, who still hand't found her voice.      

Once again, they sped towards their unknown destination.

 

* * *

 

 

Alec cursed again as his head smashed into another boulder, a move which would not have bothered him if he did not land face first in the riverbed as a result. _That’s another fistful of sand up my nose_ , he lamented. The waters kept spinning and turning him around, and he could only catch glimpses of the riverbed before another cloud of debris obscured his vision. He began reconstructing the map of the region in his mind, trying to figure out where he was. He hoped the river would not immediately lead him into a lake – his heavy vampire body most likely wouldn’t float well, and he would be helplessly trapped at the bottom, feeding on fish to survive. Inwardly, he shuddered at the prospect. _This will end soon_ , he comforted himself, but it rang so hollow that it left him feeling even worse than before.

His back slammed against another rock and he found himself stuck in that position, the currents pressing into his face. Small banks of ugly, brown fish passed him by. The turbulent sound of the river was filling his ears. Alec jerked his body and let himself be carried again, and while doing so he managed to get his head above water for a moment. Bare river banks, weeping willows, no buildings or bridges. The river seemed to go on forever, but just when Alec was beginning to think that his _Free Willy_ reenactment had been a little bit premature, the waters began slowing down, almost imperceptibly at first. Some time later, Alec found himself in shallow waters, and managed to roll and turn in such ways as to eventually land in a puddle at the bottom of the river bank. He lay there, spitting out sand and water from his mouth and nose, mentally exhausted and on the verge of reconsidering some life choices, when he heard footsteps coming from afar, together with the unmistakable sound of a human heartbeat. The steps were light, which tipped Alec off to the fact that they belonged to a youth. This was confirmed to him when a boy, a year of two older than Alec’s physical body, appeared on the upper edge of the bank. He was thin and very tanned, with a shaved head and a dirty face. His t-shirt was yellowed with age, and he carried a stick he was using to smack the reeds he found in his way. He did not see Alec at first, being too busy taking in the sight, but soon Alec’s strange form caught his eyes. Probably thinking he was a mannequin of some sort, the boy approached cautiously.          

“Hi,” said Alec in Russian.

The boy screamed.

Alec sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle readers,
> 
> I wanted to use this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for bearing with me through my updates. I know I update with the frequency of a presidential election. Alas, I need time to accumulate the details that I feel will bring the vampire world to life, to ponder over the characters' pasts and personalities, to do historical research and to think about what direction the story will take. I appreciate your thoughtful reviews - I read them very often, and they keep me going. Thank you!!


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